Spirit Airlines died as it lived: lots of angry customers and no one picking up the phone. Early yesterday morning, when America's most hated airline announced that it would immediately cease all operations, Spirit left tens of thousands of passengers at airports across America scrambling to figure out what to do next. Some arrived to catch their flight, only to find deserted check-in kiosks plastered with a goodbye message: All Spirit flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available. The end of Spirit was sudden and dramatic, but not unexpected. The budget airline had long been going through it: one failed merger after the next, two bankruptcies within the span of a year, and finally, rising fuel costs from the Iran war that turned a bad situation into a dire one. When the hope of a last-minute Trump-administration bailout fell through, Spirit Airlines apparently had no choice but to ground its banana-yellow planes for good. (A company spokesperson declined...
learn more
