Axios - Spirit Airlines may have been the butt of jokes, but it filled a vital niche for cost-conscious travelers...
- 🚌 It was the Fung Wah bus of the skies, offering a cheap way to get around so long as you managed your expectations, brought your own snacks and didn't mind a delay or two.
- 🤳 Wharton School professor Mohamed A. El-Erian wrote on Bluesky yesterday that Spirit "helped democratize the skies, providing a bridge for those who previously found travel out of reach."
It also provided badly needed competition, pushing rivals to offer no-frills basic economy options of their own.
- 💵 Delta and United are now essentially operating premium and budget airlines all at once, extracting maximum cash from folks sitting up front while filling as many seats as possible in the back.
- Spirit and Southwest both tried to go upscale in response — but it wasn't enough to save the former.
📊 Even Spirit's reputation for delays was unearned — about 77% of Spirit flights arrived on time in 2025, per Transportation Department data.
- That's nearly as good as Delta (79%) and United (78%), and notably better than American (73%).
The bottom line: Spirit's primary cause of death will be listed as skyrocketing jet fuel prices tied to the Iran war that exacerbated longstanding financial issues. MORE
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