Photo by Jesse Scott
Audio By Carbonatix
There are airlines you love. There are airlines you tolerate. And then there was Spirit — that neon-yellow disruptor that inevitably morphed air travel into a game of financial chicken and, occasionally, emotional endurance.
Spirit is dead. Long live Spirit.
For years, I swore I’d never fly them again. Many times, actually. There was the two-hour tarmac purgatory at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport, where, after bubbling passenger unrest, flight attendants relented and handed out a few mercy water bottles like they were rationing gold. Or the time they canceled my mom’s flight and charged her to fix it, a move so brazen it almost deserved applause. Or, when I woke up in New York City to find my flight home axed, then spent three hours on a train to Baltimore just to salvage my return.
These are just a few memories among dozens. Still, I kept crawling back.
Because here’s the thing: Once you understood Spirit, it worked. You didn’t fight it, you gamed it. You learned to stuff a single backpack like a life-or-death exercise, to wear your bulkiest outfit on the plane, to accept that a five-hour flight to Vegas in a non-reclining middle seat at 6’2” was simply the price of admission. You tuned out the cabin-wide chorus of complaints — legroom, delays, fees for everything short of oxygen — and focused on what mattered. You were getting there, and you were getting there cheap.
Exponentially cheap.
Spirit was South Florida’s airline, a scrappy underdog headquartered in Broward County. (It remains to be seen what will happen to its sprawling Dania Beach complex, which opened just over two years ago and cost a reported $250 million to complete.)
The airline connected South Florida — and, selfishly, me — to everywhere from a stone’s throw to my hometown in Virginia, to Nashville, to Cali, Colombia, to corners of Central America that felt suddenly, thrillingly accessible. It democratized travel in a way many legacy carriers never cared to. For every Twitter joke and horror story (even my own; see above), there were thousands of people quietly boarding flights they otherwise couldn’t afford, seeing the world on a budget that demanded depths of creativity that should be admired and not scolded.
Was it a mess sometimes? Absolutely. Spirit always appeared to give no fucks, but somehow gave just enough.
Now it’s gone, undone after failed rescue talks and a financial tailspin that, in some ways, felt inevitable before the final announcement. The fallout will be real. Thousands of Florida employees — many in Broward — are suddenly caught in the crosswinds. Travelers who relied on those bottom-barrel fares are about to feel the squeeze, especially as costs climb and competitors seize the moment. The people who will feel this most aren’t the frequent flyers chasing points and perks. They’re the ones who needed Spirit to make travel possible in the first place. And even if you didn’t fly Spirit, you’ll feel the pinch, too: Its mere existence drove flight prices down across the industry, and its elimination means even less competition in a market run by a handful of airlines.
Spirit Airlines was never glamorous, but it didn’t try to be. It didn’t offer lie-flat seats or curated menus or the illusion of luxury. It offered a seat — sometimes barely — and a chance. If you could endure the quirks, the fees, and the unpredictability, it would reward you with access.
For a lot of us, that was everything.
So here’s to the airline we loved to hate, hated to love, and, in the end, relied on more than we probably admitted. Boarding group whatever, middle seat or not, you got us a lot of places.
