What Every Founder Can Learn From Spirit Airlines’ Collapse

I was a flight attendant for Spirit Airlines. Twenty-seven years ago, when they were still a small carrier out of Detroit with a handful of planes. Free drinks on every flight, no bag fees, and no TSA.

This meant your family could walk you all the way to the gate and spend those last harrowing minutes with you before a long trip or be right there waiting when you landed.

Spirit stopped flying at 3 a.m. on May 2. The final flight went from Detroit to Dallas.

About 17,000 people lost their jobs. The flight attendants’ union sent word to its 5,000 Spirit members in the middle of the night. I’ve been a lot of things since those Spirit years. Evernote’s eighth employee, CTO six times over, an executive coach, and I still feel that one.

The coverage since then has mostly focused on the Iran war and fuel prices. That’s the last chapter. The earlier ones are more useful for founders.

When Transportation Secretary Duffy addressed the shutdown, he was blunt. Spirit “was in dire straits long before the war with Iran. Their model wasn’t working.”

By the time Spirit filed its first bankruptcy in November 2024, it had lost more than $2.5 billion since 2020. The fuel spike finished it off. You don’t lose $2.5 billion over five years from a single external shock.