In this articleAALUALDALULCCJBLULUVS64-FFFollow your favorite stocksCREATE FREE ACCOUNTSpirit Airlines kiosks at New York’s LaGuardia Airport on May 2, hours after the carrier shut down.Leslie Josephs/CNBCBALTIMORE/NEW YORK — Spirit Airlines was hours away from its final flights Friday afternoon. Jeremiah Burton was hours away from his first.”It’s my first time flying,” Burton, a 45-year-old air conditioning and heating technician, told CNBC at Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on Friday, shortly before he was scheduled to depart for New Orleans to visit his daughter and her newborn twins.”To tell you the truth, I just went online and Googled the cheapest airline ticket,” he said, adding that he paid about $500 for the trip late last month. He was scheduled to return on May 6.While Burton waited for his flight, Spirit was making final preparations to shut down overnight, ending a three-decade run that brought discount air travel to millions across the United States and as far away as Peru. Spirit canceled international flights on Thursday, to start, so travelers, planes and flight crews wouldn’t be stranded. The airline said it flew more than 50,000 people the day leading up to its collapse.Spirit bondholders rejected an 11th-hour bailout proposal from the Trump administration that could have included up to $500 million to keep the ailing airline afloat. The deal would have put the government ahead of other bondholders’ claims and given it an up to 90% stake 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, confirming that the end was near.Terminals go quietA self-check-in kiosk at Luis Munoz Marin International Airport displays an “Operational Update” message after Spirit Airlines announced it was ceasing operations early Saturday amid an impasse in talks with some creditors over a $500 million government bailout plan, in Carolina, Puerto Rico, May 2, 2026REUTERS/Ricardo ArduengoBefore dawn on Saturday, Spirit’s website and app were papered over with the message that operations had ended. “To our Guests: all flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available,” it read.By noon, LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal, an Art Deco facility that opened in 1940 and was home to Pan Am’s Clippers — and, most recently, home to Spirit at the New York airport — was nearly silent.Cibo Express closed half a day early with no customers to serve. CNBC saw the last Transportation Security Administration officer who was sent home early. Screens on the arc of yellow kiosks read: “We regret to inform you that Spirit Airlines has ceased global operations.””It has been an honor to bring friends and families closer together for 34 years,” it said at the bottom, with a QR code with next steps.United Airlines, Frontier Airlines, American Airlines, Southwest Airlines, JetBlue Airways and others said they are capping fares to get travelers home. United said about 14,000 Spirit customers booked tickets on United on Saturday. Southwest said it took in more than 20,000. JetBlue also announced plans to expand its schedule at Fort Lauderdale with a host of new services to destinations ranging from Cali, Colombia, to Nashville, Tennessee.Crews scrambled to get home. Jon Jackson, a Spirit Airlines captain, was supposed to fly his retirement flight on Saturday, but his airline shut down before he could. He hopped on a Southwest flight to get back to Baltimore from Fort Lauderdale. While on board, “we casually mentioned it to the crew,” his son, Chris, a Southwest pilot, said in a Facebook post. Southwest staff organized a water cannon salute when the aircraft arrived and he was met with applause and a reception when he walked off the jet bridge, according to the post, which was confirmed to CNBC by Southwest.Snowballing challengesWhile things came to a head this week with access to cash drying up, Spirit’s problems were years in the making. It was profitable in the 2010s and expanded rapidly as customers filled planes. But it last made money in 2019. The carrier has faced intense competition from richer, giant rivals Delta Air Lines, United and American. Spirit was also under pressure from rivals’ own bare-bones fares, soaring costs, a failed acquisition by JetBlue Airways that the Biden administration Justice Department successfully challenged, and an engine defect that grounded many of its jets. Airlines grew more reliant on high-spending customers who shell out thousands for plush, premium cabins. Most recently, the surge in jet fuel prices resulting from the Iran war was a challenge the airline couldn’t overcome, it said.In August, Spirit filed for bankruptcy protection for the second time in less than a year, and analysts said part of the reason was that it hadn’t done enough to reconfigure the airline and slash costs and that it had avoided hard decisions in its first filing in 2024. Weeks before it had hoped to emerge free from its bankruptcy, it faced the added challenge of expensive fuel.A Spirit Airlines customer service area at LaGuardia Airport’s Marine Air Terminal in New York.Leslie Josephs/CNBCSome 17,000 direct and indirect employees lost their jobs as a result of 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 crews, and by the families and communities that depend on them,” the Air Line Pilots Association’s international president, Jason Ambrosi, wrote Saturday.Sara Nelson, president of the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, the union of Spirit’s roughly 5,000 flight attendants, wrote a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and …
