Spirit Airlines starts dismantling company after collapse

Spirit Airlines‘ more than three-decade run ended over the weekend, but on Tuesday it was just starting the monthslong process of dismantling the company after the biggest U.S. airline collapse in a generation.

Spirit and its stakeholders were in bankruptcy court in White Plains, New York, to start that process, which will take months.

The carrier filed a cumulative wind-down budget of around $217 million, though that number could change.

The budget went out to February 2028. It included more than $52 million in employee costs through July and another more than $52 million for aircraft-related expenses.

The airline had 59 Airbus A320s in service and 63 in storage, as well as 37 of the larger A321s in service, and 13 of them in storage, according to aviation data firm Cirium. More than three-quarters of its fleet was leased.

Spirit shut down operations after years of struggles, most recently from heavy debt loads and a surge in costs.

Spirit’s lawyer, Marshall Huebner of Davis Polk, told a bankruptcy court on Tuesday that the jump in jet fuel prices following the U.S.-Israel attacks on Iran in February left the carrier with no choice but to shut down. That added $100 million in incremental costs for Spirit in March and April, he said.

Talks for a potential government bailout in the form of a $500 million loan that could have given the government an up to 90% stake in Spirit fell apart late last week, and the carrier officially shut down at 3 a.m. ET on Saturday.

Spirit passengers scrambled to rebook reservations. American Airlines, JetBlue Airways, Southwest Airlines, United Airlines and others said they have flown tens of thousands of Spirit customers who were stranded by the collapse.

Spirit had flown about 50,000 people in the day leading up to its closure. The airline said about 17,000 direct and indirect employees lost their jobs.

“The closing of Spirit Airlines is a sad and unfortunate event that adversely affects many parties, and that’s particularly true for the thousands of folks who are Spirit employees and families who depend on them,” the presiding judge, Sean Lane, said at Tuesday’s hearing.

“The stress level for these employees and affinities is very high, and they likely have many questions,” he continued. “Hopefully there’ll be some information discussed today to provide some answers to some of those questions, or provides information about where to get those answers. Bankruptcy can be a very difficult process, and today is a sad example of that.”