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Comments (240)

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  rapatel0
  Fundamental problem: Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments. They basically should have turned into regulated utilities long ago, but loyalty program revenue saved them.Unless this initiative will turn into a credit card company (which nobody likes or wants to do) it won't go anywherePrivate equity will likely sell the company for parts. There is no operational improvements for cash flow that they can do.Useful watch (skip to 2:20): https://youtu.be/ggUduBmvQ_4?si=cyysP7aH_CIEDZRq
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  Nican
  I remember reading about how the major airlines now are more of a "bank that happens to have planes," due to the loyalty programs being worth significantly more than the airline. Delta Air Lines earned $8.2 billion from American Express in 2025, surpassing ticket sales revenue. [1]I primarily use my favorite's airlines credit card because it gives me perks such as priority seating, and free checked bags. I am pretty certain that the credit card fees (that is passed on to the merchant) does not come close to the value that I gain for my credit card loyalty. It is a stupid game that I am forced to play, because the credit cards also provide other benefits, such as fraud protection.I am wondering right now if "Spirit Air 2.0" even has a fighting chance if they are not able to subsidize operating costs by also being a credit card company.[1] https://www.thestreet.com/personal-finance/delta-air-lines-m...
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  notepad0x90
  I could easily afford any of their competitors but I always picked Spirit airlines. The pricing makes sense, pay more if you need more things. I liked Spirit because it was more akin to riding the bus, I got treated well every time by their staff and the experience was fairly consistent.Other airlines also have cramped sits, what little they did better than Spirit isn't worth the price, and the experience was inconsistent: some times you'll get nice flight attendants, a comfy plane, and a good check-in/check-out, other times you didn't. can't plan around them. With Spirit I could plan around exactly how bad my experience would be reliably. Just about any inconvenience was some fee away to address it.Frontier was the cheap airline that just wasn't worth it. On the flip side, AA was overpriced with snobbish (just my experience, very limited) staff. Because it's a "cheap" airline, Spirit came with low expectations, and it only exceeded them to the most part.I shop at walmart compared to whole foods and other "better" chains for similar reasons. "great value" as walmart's motto goes, it isn't about the price, it's about the value you get for what you pay for. Spirit was the "great value" airline.I don't think this effort to buy it will prevail, I only wish the GME betters were in on this action. The airline's value hasn't gone away, similar to Gamestop. The people like it, the demand for it there, the airlines assets and staff haven't lost their value. I don't see how it isn't a good investment. This attempt to buy it is to little, too late. but if it came in actual stock purchase agreements, I'm down for it. But donating random cash to some site as a pledge, I don't know about that.
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  amazingamazing
  > The only thing missing is ownership that answers to the people — not to shareholders.Noble, but this will fail. Why would anyone do this? No incentive.These sorts of initiatives forget the toil of actually operating a business. You might as well get more pledges given that you'd have more control and the same profit share. It will regress to the same as the status quo.
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  pm90
  The real solution should be a massive intercity bullet train program that connects major transit hubs, like the interstate highway buildout. The massive infrastructure spend would kickstart the US economy and provide thousands of jobs.
• divbzero
  > The only thing missing is ownership that answers to the people — not to shareholders.To be clear, the proposed Spirit Air 2.0 would also be answerable to shareholders. A structural difference is that each shareholder would have one vote regardless of capital contribution. But the real substantive difference is the spirit of what they’re fighting for: worker ownership, affordable fares, transparent operations, no golden parachutes, etc.
• testemailfordg2
  A similar large scale success in India decades ago:- AMUL is an Indian multinational dairy cooperative, founded on 19 December 1946. With a turnover of US$6.2 billion (2022) and 3.6 million farmer-members, it is the world's largest dairy cooperative and a household name for milk and milk products across India.The cooperative was born out of exploitation: farmers in Kheda, Gujarat, were forced to supply milk to Polson Dairy, which held a monopoly and paid farmers unfairly through commission-taking agents.AMUL returns 85% of every rupee earned back to farmers — far above the global average of 33% — and procures milk at rates 15–20% higher than private dairies.AMUL's democratic governance ensures farmers elect board members who represent their interests, and the Managing Director of each unit is appointed by this farmer-led board — not the state government — preventing political interference and corruption.AMUL demonstrates how a business can achieve large-scale commercial success while prioritising social justice and environmental care — through collective ownership, democratic governance, equitable profit-sharing, and community investment — offering a powerful model for cooperatives worldwide.
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  antoniojtorres
  Random side note. Why do many of these (presumably) LLM stamped out sites have the same aesthetic where they all need a pulsating indicator at the top as if to indicate some sort of urgency aesthetic?
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  corvad
  I get the idea but this seems very much something not credible, like who's behind it, what are the guarantees, etc.
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  drumttocs8
  Sorry, why would I invest in a failed airline with an anonymous collective with no defined leadership?How could it do anything but fail?
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  wewtyflakes
  Maybe it is better to let the airline that treats people like adversarial cattle to die; maybe it is a good signal that that is a bad business model.
• mlmonkey
  I'm wondering why an airline like Ryan Air (which is similar in spirit to Spirit Air) didn't buy them out ...?
• veltas
  > PROPOSED ONLY: Profit shares would scale with pledge amount under the proposed structure. This is not a confirmed financial instrument. Nothing here constitutes an offer of securities.There's no way they could get away with something significantly different, right? Like anything else they'd just be liable for being sued?
• meltyness
  Let's see the pool's at $88M with $670 average buy-in, so each of the 132k buyers will owe $15,000-$60,000 of outstanding debt so they can support solvency and to keep airline prices down, and become buyers in the not particularly exciting and highly regulated, volatile capex and opex expensive, fuel consuming and definitely not particularly environmentally friendly, with much larger competitors passenger air transport industry. What an opportunity!
• ab_testing
  I am not sure what the site intends to do, but doesn’t spirit have eight billion in debt with about one billion in payments due immediately. The planes and other assets belong to the debt holders. Unless this site plans to raise a couple of billion, I don’t think they are buying any airline .
• johnnyApplePRNG
  This REEKS of /r/wallstreetbets manipulation... I vote to remove it entirely.Nobody is buying spirit air... a bunch of gamblers just want to pump the price monday morning.
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  zaptheimpaler
  Awesome, I hope we see a lot more of this. Co-ops do work, REI is one, Modo is another and we could have many more. Over and over again companies are slowly destroyed by extractive shareholders or PE firms, the current structure of a public company is not the only possible shape.
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  kylecazar
  Average pledge size is $666 (from 40k pledges). That strikes me as a lot. And obviously cursed.
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  anonymouscaller
  Seems like an interesting idea. Wish I could get some more information on who is behind this website for credibility purposes
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  lefrenchy
  Can someone help me understand the argument that the FTC blocking the merger was bad?The argument I have seen is that blocking it resulted in Spirit dying and people losing their jobs and there being less competition.Wouldn’t the same exact thing have happened regardless? Am i supposed to believe that Jet Blue would have kept all of those employees? There would be one less competitor anyway, and in the merger case they’re even more powerful now meaning competing is harder.It seems to me it’s just that creditors want to be paid out by a merger rather than paid our for cents on the dollar when it died on it’s own.
• solomonb
  I have a pitch to buy American Spirits and American airlines to bring back smoking on airplanes. I would be happy to pivot to purchasing Spirit Air.https://cofree.coffee/~solomon/InhaleLabs_PitchDeck.pdf
• happyopossum
  “It failed because Wall Street loaded it with debt”Bullhockey. Wall Street doesn’t assign debt. Poor management and bad risk-assessment leads to assuming bad debt.This is like saying it’s the car’s fault that you drove to work today…
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  roshin
  I was okay with most of the skimping with spirit airways, but what really annoyed me was their delays. I can plan ahead not to bring luggage and to sit cramped. But arriving at my destination 5 hours later was a deal breaker for me. I don't know if there are statistics for how delayed they are vs competitors, but after my second flight with them, I decided to fly with airlines that are more punctual.
• shevy-java
  The orange king is incompetent on just about every level, save for his cronies pocketing away money into private pockets. You have to ask the people who voted for him why they support this.
• neilfrndes
  Tangential. If you're interested in the history of airlines and the intense power struggles, I highly recommend the book Hard Landing: The Epic Contest for Power and Profits That Plunged the Airlines Into Chaos by Thomas Petzinger Jr.
• newuser94303
  If the employees bought it, it would probably make more sense. Random people don't seem invested enough.
• tyjkot
  Feels scammy… that’s all I’ve got to say.
• washingupliquid
  This is reminiscent of the CHAZ takeover in Seattle when the protesters planted like 4 potatoes in a urine-soaked park and called it "the People's Garden" or whatever.Spirit was an objectively terrible airline. Their business model failed. They folded. The end. This is why you can't fly Braniff or Southern Airways anymore in 2026. Failed businesses go under, they don't live on in perpetuity.
• hellojimbo
  why not just start your own airline instead of buying one that is dysfunctional and losing money
• mohamedkoubaa
  We are just not a serious country anymore are we
• wolftune
  Spirit was killed by illegal predatory pricing!! There's no reason the corporate criminals who do this stuff would go easy on competition run by different people. The answer is anti-trust enforcement (and related enforcing of the law) and much stronger regulation of businesses in general (if not outright public/government airlines)https://www.thebignewsletter.com/p/who-killed-spirit-airline...
• consumer451
  > if a farsighted capitalist had been present at Kitty Hawk, he would have done his successors a huge favor by shooting Orville down. The airline industry’s demand for capital ever since that first flight has been insatiable.- Warren Buffett (Comedian)
• exabrial
  Hear me out: A Waffle House in every Spirit Airline gate.
• Vaslo
  We can barely make an mmo with a bunch of kickstarters who threw in 50 bucks 5 years ago complaining about “the excessive money they laid out” squeaky wheeling the games to death, this is going to be even worse.Great idea in theory but…
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  csallen
  > Spirit didn't fail because people stopped flying. It failed because Wall Street loaded it with debt and extracted every dollar it could.It saddens me that people will buy into this mindless populist drivel.
• opengrass
  Looks like well-worded scam.
• swaits
  Let’s throw good money after bad!!!Brilliant.
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  rootsudo
  It’s kinda dumb. They don’t own any planes, and buying the spirit name means the bank/hesge fund gets paid because that’s probably the most valuable piece of property spirit has.The employees are all gone and shuttered, even if you go try to rehire them they are all jumping to any other company if they stayed to the end. The pilots and cabin crew lost seniority and you won’t be able to afford ALPA union pay or AFA pay.So while they somehow raised 26 million, it feels like a hollow gesture so that the creditors get paid but not really be realized into an actual airline with an AOCAt 26 million raised it’s actually better to make a new airline and run it lean. Get a good route or two and it could work, but 26 million is lean but doable. The liquidators want to get spirt planes released asap.
• tbrownaw
  This, um, seems kinda sus. An obvious AI-generated site trying to raise money for something implausible?
• mrcwinn
  Please be sure to start a second site that raises money to bail out the first site.
• wonnage
  Kinda sketchy that all of the base stats are hardcoded in the JS (foundingPatrons is 36605, totalPledged is 22816377). Then it fetches some "live" stats and adds values to that.
• burnt-resistor
  If business people couldn't run it as a business, what hope do a bunch of random fools on the internet have?Plus, it's a carbon-polluting business that props up dirty, corrupt petrochem industries and regimes.Let it die.
• crooked-v
  I wonder how much money I could get from starting a Kickstarter to attempt to* buy up as much of Spirit as possible.*and fail to
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  Teever
  I'm not American and I've never flown Spirit Air so can someone explain where all the loyalty to this airline is coming from? Like isn't this another big corp biting the dust?
• BoorishBears
  I was looking into Spirit's bankruptcy(s) and it's really fascinating.One of the creditors that piloted their exit from the first bankruptcy also provided on $80M out of a $270M line of credit secured by assets Spirit needed to survive (an RCF was backed by their right to take-off and land at LGA amoungst other thinfs)1 week before the 2nd bankruptcy, Spirit drew against the entirety of that line of credit.During the 2nd bankruptcy, besides rolling large amounts the debt owed to them from the 1st bankruptcy (so Spirit would need to pay it back before other creditors), they had the proceeds of plane sales go towards... interest payments on their RCF and paying back additional financing from the 2nd bankruptcy.The creditors leading the 2nd bankruptcy also sold the lease to Spirit's largest hangar on April 2nd, but did a similar thing again: instead of the cash going towards operations, it went to the creditors who'd led both bankruptcies.-Seeing as they refused the government's bailout, I'm guessing this is doomed as well, but interesting stuff for a non-finance person
• anon
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• theYipster
  This is perhaps the dumbest thing I’ve seen on the internet in years!
• bombcar
  letsnotandsaywedid.net
• president_zippy
  There's a crucial flaw in the dishonest "story" on this little web page of the Green Bay Packers being owned by the public: that "stock" is just a novelty piece of paper that carries no entitlement to a equity in a company.When the Packers upgrade their stadium and charge higher prices for tickets, I can promise you that they won't use the profits to buy back your shares or pay you a dividend.
• dmitrygr
  So many airline crashes were traced back to “poor company culture” by NTSB that I would never consider flying a company owned by random internet people. Having someone with a lot to lose in charge of things is a feature.
• thrill
  Let’s not.
• abacadaba
  i got 5 on it
• alex43578
  LOL. Will this be the first AI-slop to earn an SEC investigation?
• dukeofdoom
  The "Butthurt" airline, where you fly once remember for a life time. I still remember how much my ass hurt sitting in their seats, and it's been a decade.
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  cuuupid
  This isn't really a scam because no money moves and this is non-binding. Here are a list of glaring issues I see here:1) Pledges being non-binding means there is no proof of funds. This means they can't actually make an offer, presumably they will have to email everyone who pledged to put in cash and hope it resembles a solid offer.2) How much is Spirit worth? Their market cap was ~50M a few days before they shut down. Where are we getting 1.75B$ from?3) Since these are non-binding pledges I'm inclined to believe most of these numbers are bots / fake. Especially as accredited investors skew older and make up less than 1/5th of the population!4) 666 is a very specific significant number for the average pledge size to consistently stay at. I've watched the number of patrons go up by thousands and yet the average pledge size stay the exact same. The total pledged is certainly fake as a result, although see [3] pretty sure these are all fake numbers.5) You get nothing in return for your pledge and definitely nothing in return for your money. They go to great lengths to add disclaimers that everything is proposed and subject to change at their discretion.6) Just like the entire site is AI slop, the disclaimers are too, not worded correctly like regular financial disclaimers, in many places not required and in other places not good enough.7) They pretend to care a lot about disclaimers and legal verbiage yet there is no mention of the entity or who is working on this bid so missing the most basic mark when it comes to financial disclosure!8) It says "Spirit didn't fail because people stopped flying. It failed because Wall Street loaded it with debt and extracted every dollar it could." This is just a lie, no matter how Wall Street trades your stock it doesn't affect your treasury. Spirit failed because of horrible financial mismanagement and both an inability to maintain solvency under operating costs (which rose even further recently due to jet fuel shortages) as well as an inability to secure a line of credit. Technically you could also blame their corporate strategy although this was pretty good with the Jet Blue merger, so blame here also lies directly with Elizabeth Warren and Ted Cruz (unlikely duo!) for championing blocking the merger. You can find this from a simple Google search or asking your AI of choice.9) While we're on the subject of financial mismanagement, whoever wrote this clearly has not much idea of how the finances for something like this would work. _It's not just AI generated — it's AI slop._10) Whoever made this has no idea whether the assets are actually still there nor do we. Spirit may already be under binding agreements for asset sales.11) Whoever wrote this also does not understand how companies run. First of all they think they are doing something revolutionary with equity, when almost every company has ESOPs/EIPs. Profit-sharing relative to ownership is also literally how shares work and Spirit already regularly paid these out prior to beginning their financial crisis. Every publicly traded company has open books and openly reports their financials each quarter.12) "One member, one vote — your voice is equal regardless of pledge size." What incentive would anyone have for pledging more? Also, voice in what? Vote in what?13) "No golden parachutes — executive pay capped at a fair ratio to median worker pay." First of all, this is not what a golden parachute is. Secondly, either the fair ratio will be ridiculous to allow properly compensating execs, or they will be underpaying by a large margin and find it difficult to get any proper execs in place. Then they can speedrun the last few years of mismanagement at Spirit.14) "The cooperative model has worked: REI, Ocean Spray, Land O'Lakes, the Packers — all people-owned." These organizations all have well thought out models. This is not the same as AI slop.15) "Private equity is already circling the wreckage." First of all, Spirit is freely undergoing an asset sale. Their operations etc. are shut down. Not only is this not appetizing to PE, but in general PE firms stay very far away from airlines which are famously low margin difficult to operate businesses with limited potential for growth once established. PE normally focuses on airports and airport services, neither of which Spirit has (their airport assets are limited to slots at LGA which are useless to anyone except airlines). The much more obvious buyer is other airlines looking to expand control and consolidate aircrafts.16) It is common for a company facing insolvency to shut down, do an asset sale of expensive assets, and then come online in a much smaller form with remaining assets, funding itself with the sold off assets. I don't see why Spirit would not do the same thing, in which case even if a cooperative bid is put together it would be much weaker than disjoint buyers (e.g. Frontier and JetBlue separately buying some aircrafts).17) Lastly whoever wrote this has absolutely no plan to deal with the high operating costs and failing industry here, which is really much more important than ownership incentive structures. No amount of kumbayah we're all in this together is going to drive jet fuel prices down or change the economics of commercial aviation.
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