The union that represented thousands of flight attendants at the newly defunct Spirit Airlines says everyone in the United States “had a blast making Spirit the butt of the joke,” which in turn created a reputation so hard to shake that potential passengers would avoid flying with the airline at all costs.
Now, the Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA), led by firebrand leader Sara Nelson, who is often described as the most powerful flight attendant in the United States, is racing to secure protections for the 5,500 crew members at Spirit, who woke up on Saturday to discover their livelihoods had been ripped away from them.
At 3:00 am ET on May 2, Spirit announced a move that had been rumored throughout Friday – the airline had run out of money, and all possible avenues to secure new funding had been exhausted without success.
Unable to lock in a $500 million federal government bailout after creditors raised objections to the terms of the deal, Spirit was left with no choice but to wind up its operations for good after 34 years of business.
The Trump administration says it has already stepped up to secure rescue fares and additional flights for stranded passengers, while airlines are opening up jumpseats and travel privileges to Spirit employees to get them back home.
With no time to spare, attention is already turning to secure protections of thousands of Spirit employees who have suddenly found themselves unemployed through no fault of their own.
“Spirit Flight Attendants and thousands of other workers have invested their hearts and souls into this airline, and now their lives are on the line,” Nelson commented on Saturday.
“Spirit Flight Attendants are not just some asset to be written off in this process. Their lives matter, and the livelihoods of all Spirit workers must come before the profits of shareholders.”
Nelson has already sent a letter to Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Acting Secretary of Labor Keith Sonderling, urging them to ensure that Spirit employees receive owed wages as quickly as possible, along with other protections.
“I urge you to deploy the full capacity of the federal government to support these workers, who have abruptly lost their income, healthcare, and livelihoods,” Nelson wrote in the letter.
Nelson suggests that the Trump administration’s military intervention in Iran was the catalyst for Spirit’s downfall, given that the airline had been hoping to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy this Spring had it not been for the near doubling of jet fuel prices caused by the Iran War.
“This moment requires immediate federal intervention and is consistent with prior action taken during national crises,” Nelson wrote.
Nelson is hoping the federal government will fund the healthcare plans for Spirit employees for the remainder of 2026 and provide a temporary $600 weekly supplement to state unemployment benefits for a period of six months.
Some airlines, including Texas-based American Airlines, have offered to hire former Spirit employees, but to accelerate this process, Nelson has suggested that the federal government provide a temporary wage subsidy.
In the meantime, the union continues to work with Spirit’s management to get answers for some of the biggest questions facing flight attendants and other employees. Unfortunately, some of the questions won’t be easy to answer.
I have a pretty strong bias in favor of unions as a way to balance the greed of large corporations. That said I have a very low opinion of Nelson as a union head. She’s full of herself, spends way too much time grandstanding rather than trying to help her constituents, and makes periodic statements that are nothing short of insane. Now my opinion of her has actually worsened. Why on earth did she wait until Spirit went under to try to do something? Is her awareness truly so limited that she couldn’t see this potentially happening a month or more ago and have some people try to come up with some plans in advance? What protections does she think she can procure at this point, and from who? I’m extremely sympathetic to the Spirit flight attendants but dumb statements about bad jokes causing the demise of the airline does not make Nelson look any better.
Maybe time has dulled the recollections of past airline failures, it has been a while since we’ve seen a similar airline collapse. The airline business can be a tough go and, as past failures have shown us, life will go on. There’s no doubt employees will experience some significant challenges in the coming months however the Spirit Airlines collapse should come as no surprise to anyone, their unions, shareholders, Spirit management, and especially the employees. The red flags have been flying high for months; two bankruptcy filings in just under 8 months and almost $8B in debt doesn’t really convey hope for long term viability in any industry. The blame game is a bit of a waste as well. Should the Spirit-JetBlue merger have been approved? Probably. Did fuel costs sink Spirit? I’m sure they didn’t help however Spirit has been in major trouble for a lot longer than the recent rise in fuel prices. Was a failed government bailout the issue? Spirit has not shown that any new cash infusions would have saved their sinking ship. Are bad jokes the cause? That’s a really bad joke. We’ve seen this play out before, Pan Am, Braniff and all its offspring, Air Florida, Eastern, Midway, ATA, and Aloha to mention a few U.S. based airlines. There’s always initial pain however people will get hired, networks will adjust, other carriers will fill in where commercially viable, many Spirit aircraft will fly with new livery, and the loss of Spirit will be absorbed. That may seem cold or indifferent however this isn’t a new phenomenon. It’s reality in a very competitive and thin margin business.