GoKawiilAshley Owens was the maid of honor at her friend’s Las Vegas wedding on Saturday, but when she woke up that morning, her Spirit Airlines flight home no longer existed.
Spirit Airlines shut down at 3 a.m. Saturday after bondholders rejected an 11th-hour $500 million bailout from the Trump administration, ending a 34-year run. Owens had to leave the wedding early to catch a 1 a.m. Frontier flight to Dallas, and her bridal party nearly missed their hair and makeup appointments because they were rebooking flights. “We were scrambling,” she told The New York Times. “It’s insane.”
The collapse cost 17,000 people their jobs and stranded passengers across the U.S., Caribbean and Latin America. Airlines including Delta, United and JetBlue capped fares for desperate travelers, while Avianca offered free return flights. Spirit, which called itself “the Dollar General of the skies,” cited intense competition from major carriers that copied its bare-bones model, engine defects that grounded jets and surging fuel prices from the Iran war as reasons for its nosedive.