The Only Thing Worse Than Spirit Airlines
Spirit Airlines died as it lived: lots of angry customers and no one picking up the phone. Early yesterday morning, when America’s most hated airline announced that it would immediately cease all operations, Spirit left tens of thousands of passengers at airports across America scrambling to figure out what to do next. Some arrived to catch their flight, only to find deserted check-in kiosks plastered with a goodbye message: All Spirit flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available.
The end of Spirit was sudden and dramatic, but not unexpected. The budget airline had long been going through it: one failed merger after the next, two bankruptcies within the span of a year, and finally, rising fuel costs from the Iran war that turned a bad situation into a dire one. When the hope of a last-minute Trump-administration bailout fell through, Spirit Airlines apparently had no choice but to ground its banana-yellow planes for good. (A company spokesperson declined to comment.)
The schadenfreude that Spirit’s many haters are feeling now is free—unlike everything else Spirit ever offered. The airline lured customers with dirt-cheap fares, and then nickel-and-dimed them with hidden extra charges. Wanted to book online? That came with a “passenger usage” fee of up to $28 each way. A carry-on bag? That was $33, or more if you waited until the last minute. Or how about a printed boarding pass? Another $10 a pop if you asked an airport agent. Even the water came with a price tag: $4.50. And that was before the indignity of cramped seats, frequent delays, and unreliable customer service. People have dubbed Spirit the “school bus of the sky” and the “airline equivalent of gas station sushi.” In one 2014 poll, respondents said that they would prefer sitting near snakes on a plane—actual reptiles, not the movie—over flying Spirit.
For all the justified kvetching, America is about to learn a hard lesson: The only thing worse than a world with Spirit is one without it. The Spirit haters “are going to eat their words,” Katy Nastro, a travel expert at Going, a flight-discount site, told me. The airline ran on a singular cynical insight: In exchange for low air fare, plenty of travelers would be willing to tolerate essentially anything. When one passenger emailed Spirit in 2007 to complain, Ben Baldanza, then the company’s CEO, accidentally replied-all and gave up the game: “Let him tell the world how bad we are,” he wrote. “He’s never flown before with us anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”
[Read: The Spirit Airlines paradox]
And Baldanza was right. Even factoring in all of the add-in fees, Spirit reliably was among the most affordable options. Especially if you needed a last-minute ticket, Spirit was going to offer you the cheapest option “nine times out of 10,” Nastro said. I owe some credit for my marriage to a $58.19 Spirit flight. In 2017, I had just started dating my now-wife when she moved halfway across the country, and a flight I booked on a whim kept us together. My flight was delayed and the seat was roughly as cushiony as a park bench, but the price was right, and now I have a life partner.
In other words, Spirit was the airline of the masses—the kind of people who pack their own sandwiches instead of paying $21 for a turkey wrap at Hudson News. Because Spirit was so focused on budget travelers, the airline operated in many smaller cities that otherwise had few other options. And it was the only airline that offered nonstop flights on certain routes.
Even if you swore off Spirit—and plenty of people did—you have certainly benefited from the airline. Spirit paved the way for other ultra-cheap airlines, and the entire industry has had to slash prices to keep up. Consider what happened when Spirit started flying from Houston to Kansas City in 2014. The airline launched its route at $150, more than half the average price offered by the sole carrier at the time, United. Within months, United had sliced its fare down to $180, and Spirit had dipped down to $90. The same phenomenon happened so many times and in so many places that it now has a name: the Spirit Effect. According to one study, in markets with ultra-cheap airlines such as Spirit and Frontier, air fare is 21 percent lower on average compared with markets without them.
In response to the airline’s success, most airlines now have their own “Basic Economy” fares that needle you to pay extra for baggage, seat selection, and so much else. (In large part, Spirit was a victim of its own success.) None of that is going away now that Spirit is no longer around. Instead, everyone is going to be stuck paying more for less. Without the competition from Spirit, airlines have one fewer reason to keep prices down. One analysis found that air fares rose by an average of 14 percent for routes that Spirit left between 2024 and 2025. And 2026 is already turning out to be the most expensive summer-travel season in years. “This is the worst time for the worst possible outcome,” Nastro said.
[Read: The great travel meltdown of 2026]
The paradox of Spirit is this: It was a horrible airline to fly. But it also allowed more people to fly than ever before. When you’re forced to squeeze inside of a middle seat in row 27, it’s not hard to feel nostalgic about a time when flying was glamorous and comfortable. In the 1950s, Pan Am passengers in coach were served stuffed guinea hen. Flying round-trip from Los Angeles to New York cost $208 in 1958; in today’s dollars that’s $2,377. Since just 1995, average air fare in the U.S. decreased by 41 percent. Now cheap flights are becoming harder and harder to come by. Spirit is gone, and other budget airlines—Jet Blue and Frontier—are also struggling. Soon, the $4.50 water bottle will look like the real golden age of travel.