Spirit Airlines shuts down as company says it can't keep up with higher oil prices

WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (AP) — Spirit Airlines, an impish upstart that shook the industry with its irreverent ads and deep discount fares, announced Saturday that it has gone out of business after 34 years.

The ultralow cost airline that once operated hundreds of daily flights on its bright yellow planes and employed about 17,000 people said it had “started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately.”

Although Spirit had gone bankrupt twice before, the company said high oil prices, which have been rising because of the war with Iran, made it impossible to stay aloft.

The airline said on its website that all flights have been canceled and customer service is no longer available. Some passengers arrived Saturday for flights and were stunned to find them canceled, while workers learned overnight they were out of jobs.

“We are proud of the impact of our ultra-low-cost model on the industry over the last 34 years and had hoped to serve our guests for many years to come,” Spirit’s announcement said.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said Saturday that Spirit had a reserve fund set up for customers who bought directly from the airline to get refunds. People who bought from third-party vendors like travel agents would have to seek refunds from them.

Duffy said United, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest were offering $200 one-way flights for people who had Spirit confirmation numbers and proof of purchase for a limited time. Other airlines would also help Spirit employees who might be stranded, as well as offering them a preferential application process as they look for work.

Spirit said in a statement it was working to get more than 1,300 crew to their home bases and that the final Spirit flight landed at Dallas Fort Worth International Airport from Detroit Metropolitan Airport.

The company advised customers that they could expect refunds but there would be no help in booking travel on other airlines.

The Trump administration had considered a government bailout for the cash-strapped business to keep it from going under, but a deal was not reached. Of the potential bailout, Duffy said Saturday “we often times don’t have half a billion dollars laying around.”

President Donald Trump had floated the idea of a bailout last week after the airline found itself in bankruptcy proceedings for the second time in less than two years with jet fuel prices soaring because of the Iran war.

‘They got you there’

Five Spirit flights were still showing as “on time” on Saturday morning on the departure board in Atlanta. A trickle of passengers who hadn’t heard the news were still showing up.

“What!?” exclaimed Taylor Nantang as she, her husband and four children arrived for a Saturday afternoon Spirit flight from Atlanta to Miami for a spur-of-the-moment vacation. The family had driven down from Tennessee to the Atlanta airport.

“So the whole airline at every airport is out of business?” asked Nantang. “Oh my, that’s crazy.”

Other passengers wondered whether the airline would still answer its customer service phone, or when the refunds for canceled flights might arrive on their credit cards.

Joshua Sigler, who had bought a ticket Friday for a flight Saturday to Miami, said he would just return home after learning of the cancellation, rather than try to take advantage of deals other airlines were offering to stranded Spirit passengers.

He said he had gotten no communication from Spirit, which he had flown multiple times in the past. “They get you there,” he said of past flights. “It was cheap.”

‘Boo-hoo crying’

Former Spirit flight attendant Freddy Peterson was on a Spirit flight from Detroit that arrived in Newark around 11 p.m. Friday. He said that despite rumors flying on social media Friday, things seemed kind of normal, with more than 200 passengers on the plane.

“All our aircraft were packed,” he said.

Peterson, 60, said he set his alarm clock for 3 a.m. Saturday to check the company website at the hour of the rumored shutdown and learned all Spirit flights were canceled. He said Delta Air Lines brought him and another flight attendant back to Atlanta on Saturday morning, with Peterson leaving from there to drive to his home in Shellman in southwest Georgia.

“I’ll probably do the boo-hoo crying and all that other stuff once I get in my car.”

Peterson said he had been a flight attendant with Spirit for 10 years and the company has “done wonders for me.” He said the airline’s reputation for bargain basement chaos was largely undeserved, but he did fault management for not communicating with the employees in the closing days, saying a promised employee town hall was canceled.

Bailout fizzles

As late as Friday afternoon, Trump had said his administration was looking at a bailout for Spirit and had given the budget carrier a “final proposal” for a taxpayer-funded takeover.

Spirit proudly disrupted the penny-pinching portion of the airlines industry with its no-frills, low-cost flights and provocative ads like its “Check Out the Oil on Our Beaches” campaign after the Deepwater Horizon disaster in 2010, referencing suntan oil, but alluding to the crude spilled on the Gulf Coast.

However, Spirit has struggled financially since the COVID-19 pandemic, weighed down by rising operating costs and growing debt. By the time it filed for Chapter 11 protection in November 2024, Spirit had lost more than $2.5 billion since the start of 2020.

The budget carrier sought bankruptcy protection again in August 2025, when it reported having $8.1 billion in debts and $8.6 billion in assets, according to court filings.

White House blames Biden

The White House had blamed President Joe Biden’s administration for Spirit’s tenuous financial situation. Biden, a Democrat, opposed a proposed merger between Spirit and JetBlue in 2023. On Saturday, Trump administration officials took to social media to amplify voices of conservative critics who faulted Biden for Spirit’s demise.

On Saturday, Duffy blamed Biden as well as his predecessor Pete Buttigieg.

“Many at the time said that this was a disaster. This merger should have been allowed,” he said.

Tad DeHaven, a policy analyst at the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank, said the Trump administration also bears responsibility, arguing that the airline’s current crisis reflects a chain reaction of policy missteps rather than a single decision. He pointed specifically to Trump’s decision to strike Iran as “bad foreign policy,” saying the conflict drove up jet fuel prices and Spirit’s operating costs.

“They were already in trouble,” DeHaven said, describing the situation as “a compounding effect in terms of policy.”

Supporters of a rescue including labor unions representing Spirit’s pilots, flight attendants and ramp workers said a collapse would put thousands of Americans out of work and hurt consumers by reducing airline competition and increasing airfares. About 17,000 jobs could be impacted, according to Spirit lawyer Marshall Huebner.

Budget-conscious and leisure travelers would likely feel Spirit’s absence the most, especially in places where the airline has a big footprint such as Las Vegas and the Florida cities of Fort Lauderdale and Orlando.

The carrier flew about 1.7 million domestic passengers in February, roughly half a million fewer than during the same month a year earlier, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Spirit also has sharply reduced its capacity, with about half as many seats available this month than in May 2024.

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Yamat reported from Las Vegas. Amy reported from Atlanta. Catalini reported from Morrisville, Pennsylvania. Associated Press writer Josh Funk in Omaha, Nebraska, contributed.