edit: do folks not think more competition would be better for consumers? i'm no stan of capitalism but surely it could be made better, sheesh.

That being said, I suspect many people had never heard about Lehman Brothers before 2008...

Still, a zero-notice shutdown is a bit much. Some people who have tickets for tomorrow probably went to bed already.

There's still the mechanics of winding down. All the planes have to be flown to suitable storage locations. With such an abrupt shutdown, they'll have mis-positioned aircraft all over their route system. Many planes are probably leased, so the lessor may have to arrange to take custody of the aircraft. It's probably better if the aircraft are leased - there's some lessor with funds to take care of the job and the knowledge of how to arrange it, since a handover and move happens at the end of each aircraft lease. Aircraft Spirit actually owns will have to be moved by a bankruptcy receiver, which is a lawyer trying to run what's left of an airline. Most major airports charge very high parking fees. LAX charges $1000 for the first day, and that goes up to $5000 a day on day four. They're not in the storage business.

There are probably a lot of middle of the night phone calls and meetings going on right now.

Sure.

In this case, the bankcruptcy was handled by cancelling all flights with 1 day of notice. This level of ugliness is not necessary.

The capital will probably go to further the AI bubble, I really don't see how that would be more useful than enabling travel.

Can you expand on this? How do you explain e.g. ecosystems around centuries-old redwoods?

Your statement might be true in a system with healthy safeguards ands competition, but that isn't the system we have in the real world today.

More generally, it is also a low cost carrier at a time when, after years of competing on price, airlines are seeing people willing to pay more for a better experience. All other carriers are expanding their premium options, catering to the affluent part of the K economy (for the first time ever the majority of Delta revenue came from premium cabins over main). Meanwhile, Spirit was dealing on the other side of the K who is also most impacted by increasing inflation, etc... giving Spirit zero ability to raise prices.

https://www.npr.org/2026/05/02/nx-s1-5807933/spirit-airlines... describes this in more detail.