Spirit Airlines Shuts Down After Rescue Talks With White House Fall Through

Spirit Airlines is shutting down, the low-budget carrier announced on social media Saturday morning, after last-minute negotiations on a $500 million rescue plan with the Trump administration fell through.

“It is with great disappointment that Spirit Airlines has started winding down its global operations, effective immediately,” the carrier wrote in a post on X. “All flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available.”

On Friday, President Donald Trump left open the possibility of a deal to save the airline, telling reporters that the White House had given the company “a final proposal.”

“I would say we are driving a tough deal, but it’s one of those things,” he said. “We will do it or we won’t.”

Spirit had suffered financial troubles for years, filing for bankruptcy in 2024 and 2025 before finally closing down on Saturday.

In a Saturday press conference, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told reporters Trump was “like a dog on a bone trying to figure out a way to keep Spirit afloat,” but that a creditor issue undermined prospects of a deal.

“Again, they have the final say of whether they want to do a deal with the government,” Duffy said. “But also from the government’s perspective, we oftentimes don’t have a half a billion dollars laying around in a spare account that we can put into a bailout of an airline. So there was creative thinking on how it could happen. Those two things never materialized.”

Several top airlines had committed to offering capped ticket prices for Spirit customers rebooking canceled flights, Duffy said. American Airlines and Delta will also be offering lower fares on “high-volume Spirit routes,” according to the Department of Transportation.

Several Republican lawmakers blamed the airline shuttering on Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who long fought against a $3.8 billion deal that would have seen Spirit merge with JetBlue. A judge blocked the merger in 2024.

Warren — and the administration of former President Joe Biden — had argued the deal would raise prices and reduce competition among airlines.

“The 14,000 employees at Spirit who’ve lost their job loss, the travelers who will now pay higher fares, and the shareholders and debt holders who have been wiped out can thank Elizabeth Warren,” Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) wrote on X Saturday. “Electing left politicians, who have ZERO business experience, has consequences.”

“Stunning,” Texas Sen. Ted Cruz wrote alongside a repost of a social media post calling out Warren in light of the closure.

Warren’s Senate office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Democrats, meanwhile, say rising fuel costs stemming from the war in Iran are at fault for Spirit’s demise.

“This is a devastating, avoidable outcome,” Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.) wrote on X. “I urged President Trump to help Spirit and preserve thousands of jobs and low-cost travel. The energy crisis he caused has instead handed more job losses and higher prices to an already-struggling Florida economy. I'll do all I can to help families impacted by this.”

Duffy pushed back on those claims, pointing to the bankruptcy claims Spirit had filed well before Trump made the decision to go after Tehran.

“Spirit was in dire straits long before the war with Iran,” he said. “Multiple times they had filed for bankruptcy. Their model wasn’t working. They couldn’t get to fiscal health. So this was not the impetus; the war was not the impetus for Spirit.”