Inside Spirit Airlines’ failed ‘Hail Mary’ to the Trump administration

By Betsy Klein, CNN

(CNN) — Winding down a major US airline is a complicated business. Doing so when the president of the United States hints it could be saved adds another layer of complexity.

Wracked with financial trouble, Spirit Airlines had filed for bankruptcy for the second time in August 2025. Months later, the conflict with Iran had driven up fuel prices and made its financial position even more untenable, putting it on the brink of closure.

For weeks, Trump administration officials were in talks with the bargain airline on the possibility of a $500 million bailout package. The proposal would effectively give the government control of the overwhelming majority of Spirit’s shares.

President Donald Trump publicly suggested that he would be on board “if we can get it at the right price.”

“They have some good aircrafts, some good assets, and when the price of oil goes down, we’d sell it for a profit,” he told reporters in the Oval Office last month.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick met with Trump to lay out the options, according to two sources familiar with the meeting, which prompted some internal division among the president’s team.

Lutnick, one source familiar with the deliberations told CNN, “was pushing” for a deal, with a second source familiar suggesting that he argued it would be a political win for the administration. But there were reservations about the possibility of a bailout from officials including Duffy, Trump deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller, National Economic Council Director Kevin Hassett, and members of the White House counsel’s office, a third source familiar with deliberations told CNN. Those included concerns about pumping money into a company with a bad financial record, two of the sources said.

The idea of a bailout for a single airline also sparked backlash from both the airline industry and among Republicans in Congress. Previous bailouts have been in support of all US airlines, not a single carrier or group of airlines. And those rescue packages were in response to a paralyzed industry, like when passengers were afraid to fly in the wake of terrorist attacks or a pandemic, not because of increased costs and losses.

Trump, meanwhile, “was like a dog on a bone trying to figure out a way to keep Spirit afloat,” Duffy told reporters Saturday, adding that he was “in the Oval many times” with the president in the days before the airline shuttered.

After that initial meeting with Duffy and Lutnick, it became clear that a bailout would be more complex than Trump’s efforts to gain government control over companies like US Steel or Intel. The possibility of invoking the Defense Production Act — a law that gives the government more control to direct industrial production during emergencies — was raised, but rejected by the Department of Defense, two of the sources familiar with deliberations said. And ultimately, officials were never able to identify a funding source for the $500 million.

Meanwhile, Duffy actively floated the idea of a Spirit acquisition by another airline, sources said, gauging interest for a proposition that failed to gain traction, the second and third source said.

On Thursday, the White House gave Lutnick the word to tell Spirit CEO Dave Davis that there would be no government bailout, the third source said.

That evening, Lutnick spoke by phone with Davis, and while they “left open the possibility of a Hail Mary,” the first source said, “there was the determination that we have to start putting things in motion to wind this down – even if we are going to try to find an off-ramp on Friday.”

Trump administration officials, including Duffy, began working with Spirit’s competitors to create a plan for customers left stranded and for the company’s 14,000 employees.

Then, early Friday afternoon, the president appeared to express some optimism that a plan to keep the airline afloat could materialize.

“We’re looking at it,” he told reporters at the White House. “But if we can’t make a good deal, no institution’s been able to do it. I’d like to save the jobs, but we’ll have an announcement sometime today. … We gave them a final proposal.”

Trump’s comments, the first source familiar with deliberations said, brought “new life” to the possibility of a bailout. Stakeholders, they added, “were holding out hope.”

But Trump did not follow up on those comments to the media, that source said. And while Lutnick continued to push toward a deal, Trump, who went on to make multiple public appearances Friday evening in Florida, did not directly engage with Davis or other stakeholders, including the key group of creditors that would have been responsible for backing the proposal.

“It felt like classic Trump to me — there’s always a deal to be had, let’s keep talking,” the second source said.

Later Friday, Spirit began canceling some overnight and early morning flights. At 6 p.m., the company’s board was expected to meet to take a vote, but the meeting never happened as efforts continued to try to cobble together a plan, according to a source. But by 11 p.m., the airline began to tell its union leaders there would be no deal.

Around 2 a.m., after the final Spirit plane had landed, the company announced in a statement that it had “started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately.”

Duffy said Saturday that the creditors failed to agree to a deal with the US government.

“In the end, this was a creditor issue. Again, they have the final say of whether they want to do a deal with the government,” he said at a press conference at Newark Liberty International Airport.

Duffy continued: “But also from the government’s perspective, we oftentimes don’t have a half a billion dollars laying around in a spare account that we can put into a bailout of an airline. So there was creative thinking on how it could happen. Those two things never materialized.”

Hours before the overnight announcement, Trump allies were already shifting blame to their predecessors.

Alex Bruesewitz, an outside Trump adviser, pointed to a 2024 social media post by Democratic Sen. Elizabeth Warren praising a federal judge’s ruling that blocked JetBlue’s proposed purchase of Spirit due to antitrust concerns.

“If Spirit Airlines fails, the blame will fall squarely on crazy Elizabeth Warren and the Biden Administration. Their anti-capitalist policies killed the Spirit–JetBlue merger that would have saved the airline and protected its workers’ jobs,” he wrote.

Warren rebuked that claim, writing on social media Saturday that, “Spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war was the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted Spirit airline” and that the merger failed because a Reagan-appointed judge said it was illegal.

At Newark airport Saturday morning, Duffy also shifted the blame to his predecessors.

“History has judged the denial of the merger between JetBlue and Spirit through the Biden administration, with, I think, a view that it was a massive mistake,” Duffy said.

The Justice Department sued in 2023 to halt JetBlue’s proposed acquisition of Spirit, as part of the Biden administration’s argument for greater competition between businesses, especially in the industry. A federal judge in January 2024 ruled against the merger, outlining concerns over increased fares for flyers and significant debt for JetBlue.

Meanwhile, Spirit’s demise has stranded thousands of passengers who have to adjust plans and millions who have tickets for future dates.

United, Delta, JetBlue and Southwest, Duffy announced Saturday, “are capping their ticket prices for Spirit customers.” American Airlines and Delta, he said, are offering “reduced fares on high-volume Spirit routes.” Allegiant, he added, has “committed to freezing fare prices on routes that they have shared with Spirit.” And Frontier Airlines, he said, is offering 50% off base fares until May 10.

But the impacts of the airline’s demise are just beginning – and the closure could have broader effects on prices and make air travel less accessible.

“It’s another blow to the working class. People who fly Spirit fly at a bare minimum (of services) and now they don’t have another option,” the first source said.

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