“Good luck my friend” as the terminals go dark

BALTIMORE/NEW YORK — Spirit Airlines was hours away from its last flights Friday afternoon. Jeremiah Burton was hours away from his first.

“This is my first time on a plane,” Burton, a 45-year-old air conditioning and heating technician, told CNBC on Friday at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport, shortly before he was scheduled to depart for New Orleans to visit his daughter and newborn twins.

“To tell you the truth, I went online and Googled the cheapest plane ticket,” he said, adding that he paid about $500 for the trip late last month. His return was scheduled for May 6.

While Burton waited for his flight, Spirit was making final preparations to close its doors overnight, ending a three-decade run that brought discounted air travel to millions across the United States and as far as Peru. Spirit canceled its international flights on Thursday, to start, so travelers, planes and flight crews wouldn’t be stranded. The airline said it carried more than 50,000 people the day before its collapse.

Spirit bondholders rejected a Trump administration bailout proposal at the last minute that could have included up to $500 million to keep the struggling airline afloat. The deal would have given the government a head start on the demands of other bondholders and given it a stake of up to 90% in the airline.

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick called Spirit CEO Dave Davis to tell him there was no deal and that bondholders and the government were far from an agreement, according to a person familiar with the matter, who asked not to be named because they were not authorized to discuss the communication. Bondholders sent a letter to Spirit’s board of directors, confirming that the end was near.

Before dawn on Saturday, Spirit’s website and app were covered with the message that operations had ended. “To our guests: all flights have been canceled and customer service is no longer available,” it reads.

By midday, LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal, an Art Deco facility opened in 1940 and home to the Pan Am Clippers — and, more recently, the Spirit at New York Airport — was almost silent.

Cibo Express closed half a day early with no customers to serve. CNBC has seen the last Transportation Security Administration officer who was sent home early. The screens on the yellow kiosks arch read: “We regret to inform you that Spirit Airlines has ceased global operations.”

“It has been an honor bringing friends and families together for 34 years,” it reads at the bottom, with a QR code indicating next steps.

United Airlines, Border Airlines, American airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways and others said they were capping fares to get travelers home. United said about 14,000 Spirit customers booked tickets on United as of Saturday. Southwest said it had welcomed more than 20,000. JetBlue also announced plans to expand its Fort Lauderdale program with a host of new services to destinations from Cali, Colombia, to Nashville, Tennessee.

The teams rushed to return home.

Spirit Airlines captain Jon Jackson was supposed to take his retirement flight Saturday, but his airline shut down before he could.

He took a southwest flight back to Baltimore from Fort Lauderdale. On board, “we talked to the crew about it,” his son, Chris, a Southwest pilot, said in a Facebook post. Southwest staff staged a water cannon salute as the plane arrived and he was greeted with applause and a reception when he left the jet bridge, according to the post, which was confirmed to CNBC by Southwest.

While things came to a head this week with access to cash drying up, Spirit’s problems have been years in the making. It was profitable in the 2010s and grew quickly as customers filled planes. But the last time she made money was in 2019.

The carrier has faced intense competition from wealthier giant rivals. Delta AirlinesUnited and American.

Spirit was also under pressure from competitors’ discounted fares, soaring costs, a failed acquisition by JetBlue Airways that the Biden administration’s Justice Department successfully challenged, and an engine defect that grounded many of its planes. Airlines have become increasingly dependent on big-spending customers who shell out thousands of dollars for luxurious, high-end cabins. More recently, soaring jet fuel prices resulting from the war in Iran have been a challenge the airline has been unable to overcome, she said.

In August, Spirit filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than a year, and analysts said that was partly because it had not done enough to reconfigure the airline and cut costs and had avoided tough decisions when it first filed in 2024. Weeks before it hoped to emerge from bankruptcy, it faced the added challenge of expensive fuel.

Some 17,000 direct and indirect employees lost their jobs following the airline’s collapse, the carrier said.

“The pain of this decision will not be felt in boardrooms. It will be felt by pilots, flight attendants, mechanics, dispatchers and ground staff, as well as the families and communities who depend on them,” Air Line Pilots Association International President Jason Ambrosi wrote Saturday.

Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the union for Spirit’s roughly 5,000 flight attendants, wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Acting Labor Secretary Keith Sonderling, urging them to try to ensure that flight attendants are paid and compensated for earned vacation and per diem while the case moves through bankruptcy court. She also requested that they receive a $600 weekly state unemployment supplement from the federal government.

“Standard unemployment coverage is not a substitute for full pay, and this increased support would help stabilize households while workers find new jobs,” she said.

Spirit had only about 4% market share in the United States, according to aviation data firm Cirium, but an outsized presence in the minds of many Americans — and on their social media.

Henry Harteveldt, founder of Atmosphere Research Group and a former airline executive, said Spirit was a “true pioneer” of discount air travel but remained “the airline America loved to hate,” in part because of its shoddy fares, customer service debacles and spotty reliability in previous years.

Spirit has become a favorite punchline among comedians. “The CEO of Spirit Airlines told me: ‘With $500 million [from the Trump administration] our planes could have two wings again,” “Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon said last month.

In 2017, Spirit recruited guest-facing employees at the Disney Institute, a leadership and professional training subsidiary of Disney, to improve its staff’s interactions with guests and made great strides in improving its on-time performance.

There were still enthusiastic fans and customers until the end.

“For a two-hour flight, I could really be in a lot of pain,” said Kara Snyder, 30, who works in health insurance sales. She said that for a short flight from Florida to Baltimore, the lack of legroom and perks didn’t matter to her. Snyder said she flew Spirit to Baltimore and was returning to Orlando on Border Airlines. “I tend to stick to budget airlines,” she said.

International flights to Europe or Africa are another matter, Snyder said. “I’m going to Delta,” she said. “I’m picky about that. It has to be Delta.”

On Friday evening, at Spirit’s headquarters in Dania Beach, Fla., near its home base at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, Spirit’s management team was huddled in a situation room, watching the arrival of its latest flights.

The news broke earlier than 3 a.m. Saturday that time would be running out for the airline and its fleet of bright yellow jets.

“Good luck to all of you,” an American Airlines employee said on a Spirit flight, according to audio posted by LiveATC.net. “Sorry to hear what happened.”

One of the pilots of the last Spirit flight, NK1833 from Detroit to Dallas Fort Worth International, shortly before landing after midnight Saturday, asked the tower: “Are there any other Spirit flights arriving after us?” There were 175 passengers on board.

“I don’t see anything,” the controller said. “Then you might be the last.”

He then told the pilot, “Well, it’s been a pleasure working with you and I wish you the best.”

“Thank you very much,” the pilot responded, according to LiveATC.

Wes Egan, a Spirit dispatcher for about 23 years, told CNBC that he was working in the company’s Orlando operations center Friday night when one of the carrier’s pilots asked for information about the airline’s plight. Senior officials had just informed staff around 11:30 p.m. that operations were about to cease.

It texted the pilot through a special system in the cockpit for alerts and other information.

“WE OFFICIALLY STOP FLYING AT 3:00 AM EST 5/2,” the message read. “SPEED MY FRIEND. »