(AFP) – Low-cost US carrier Spirit Airlines said on Saturday that all of its flights have been cancelled as it started an “orderly wind-down of operations” after a potential White House bailout fell through. US President Donald Trump previously expressed interest in organizing a package to save thousands of jobs at the carrier, which filed for bankruptcy twice in 2025.
Spirit Airlines’ parent company, Spirit Aviation Holdings, said in an early Saturday press release that it has “started an orderly wind-down of operations, effective immediately.” “All Spirit flights have been cancelled, and Spirit Guests should not go to the airport,” said the company, which had put pressure on larger airlines with its no-frills offering launched over 30 years ago. The company’s webpage displayed a message telling guests that “customer service is no longer available.” The airline said it will process refunds for purchased flights.
Spirit’s President and CEO Dave Davis said the company in March “reached an agreement with our bondholders on a restructuring plan that would have allowed us to emerge as a go-forward business.” But skyrocketing jet fuel prices since the start of the Middle East war “left us with no alternative but to pursue an orderly wind-down of the Company,” Davis said in the press release.
“Sustaining the business required hundreds of millions of additional dollars of liquidity that Spirit simply does not have and could not procure. This is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted.” The company said that the lack of additional funding meant that Spirit “had no choice but to begin this wind-down.”
Spirit Airlines, which began offering flights in 1992, was known for its yellow-colored planes and employed just over 11,000 people as of 2024. The airlines announced in February an “agreement in principle” to restructure its debt with creditors, saying it expected to emerge from bankruptcy by early summer. But a spike in fuel prices sparked by the US-Israeli war on Iran that started a few days later delivered a heavy blow to the struggling carrier.
© 2024 AFP
