Spirit Airlines announced on May 2 that it was ceasing all operations.
Spirit Airlines became so popular that after its closure was announced, a website created to purchase and revive Spirit Airlines crashed due to the overwhelming response from people who wanted to pledge money to save the airline from the dust. Hunter Peterson, a TikToker, started the website to crowdfund Spirit Airlines after the airline announced it would cease operations on May 2. The company cited financial difficulties due to rising fuel prices and canceled all flights while announcing that their customer service had also been closed.Spirit President and CEO Dave Davis said in a statement, “Sustaining the business requires hundreds of millions of dollars of additional liquidity that Spirit does not have and cannot afford. This is extremely disappointing and is not the outcome any of us wanted.”Peterson released a video proposing that people raise money to fly Spirit Airlines, and the site crashed within days. “This is a genius idea: We nationalize Spirit Airlines,” Peterson said in the video. “People-owned. Airlines gone. We create a new airline.”Letbuyspiritair.com allowed interested patrons to offer a stake in the proposed ownership of Spirit Airlines, with no money involved, but only an expression of interest. “This started as a joke and it’s quickly spiraling out of control in the best possible way,” Peterson said in a TikTok video after it was posted on the website.The website now (4 May) says there were 124,755 founding patrons who pledged a total of $88,071,428, which was unverified by website officials and the average pledge size was $667. “The movement grew so fast that it overwhelmed our servers. We are upgrading the infrastructure right now and will be back with full pledge functionality within 24-48 hours. You can still browse the site. Pledges are temporarily disabled. Follow us for real-time updates when pledges reopen,” the site reads.In a TikTok video posted on May 3, Peterson said he was looking to connect with developers to upgrade the pledge website, public relations professionals to manage news outreach, attorneys with experience in aviation, and airline executives who can provide much-needed details.
Why is Hunter Peterson interested in saving Spirit Airlines?
Peterson flew 24 hours straight on Spirit to create the material. In a YouTube video viewed nearly 93,000 times, Peterson visited five of Spirit’s busiest airports, and only counted the time spent on the plane as part of the project.