Spirit Airlines shuts down, cancels all flights

Spirit Airlines is going out of business.The airline said early this morning that it has begun shutting down operations.It's also canceled all upcoming flights.This is what customers see when they go to the spirit website.The discount carrier says customer service is no longer available.It's also advising passengers not to come to the airport and to rebook their travel on different airlines.

17 ,000 workers are now out of a job.Passengers.They're scrambling to make other travel arrangements.The final Spirit Flight touchdown at Dallas -Fort Worth International just after midnight.Air traffic controllers and other airline pilots, they were heard wishing the Spirit pilots well as they made their final descent.Well, the soaring jet fuel costs, which have nearly doubled since the start of the war with Iran, well, they derailed Spirit's plans to emerge from its second bankruptcy.

Spirit and the Trump administration also failed to come to a last -minute bailout deal before the airline, for the airline, I should say, on Friday.CNN's Gloria Pazmino is live at LaGuardia Airport, one of the Spirit hubs.Did people take the warning and not show up?What are you seeing?

Well, Victor, hopefully if you're one of the more than one million passengers whose flights are now canceled, you know that you should be checking your email, checking your airline app and not coming to the airport.But despite that, we have run into at least two people in the past hour who came in here thinking that they were going to be able to fly out.They told me that they simply had not checked their email.They did not realize that their flights had been canceled.This is Terminal A in LaGuardia Airport.It's a small terminal, but it is the spirit lines hub at this airport, and I want to show you what it looks like now.

You see up in the board here it tells you all of these flights that were scheduled for today to fly to arrive here have been canceled.Now I The terminal right now is pretty empty.And if you walk up to one of these check -in monitors, check -in booths where you would have checked in if you were flying today, it tells you what's going on.We read to inform you Spirit Airlines has seized global operations.And perhaps most frustratingly, it says customer service is no longer available.That's what passengers are going to have to be dealing with today and in the next few days as they try to rebook themselves on different airlines.

Some of the people I spoke to just a minute ago told me that not only they did not realize that their flights were being canceled, they're not sure what they're going to do next.Now, if you would have come into this airport for a flight that was scheduled today, you would have walked right here to this departure gate.And I just want to show you what it looks like, that it is completely shut down.There's no access.And then there are these flyers everywhere just notifying people about the shutdown, telling them that essentially they're not going to be going anywhere today, telling them about the airline shutdown and directing them to other airlines.Now let's talk about what's happened in the last few hours since we heard from Superior Airlines announcing that they would be ceasing operation.

It happened in the early hours of the morning.after, like you said, they failed to get that $500 million bailout from the federal government.In many ways, Spirit Airlines made history in the airline industry for the past 34 years.They were considered sort of a maverick of the industry, right?They sold cheap tickets, but they charged you for almost everything else, water, printing your books.pass, bringing on your bag.

That was the model, and it was successful.At one point, Spear Airlines was actually one of the fastest growing airlines in the United States, but that all started to change, especially after the other major airlines began to compete with them and provide some of those same options, including cheaper tickets.Now, as you said in the beginning, Victor, The last sort of nail on the coffin for Spirit Airlines in the past few months was, of course, the surging price of fuel.That was what made it so difficult for them to stay afloat.And as we heard from Spirit Airlines overnight, they're now seizing their operation.After 34 years in the industry, more than 17 ,000 people expected to lose their jobs and millions of passengers likely to be stranded in the next few days.

Victor?

Gloria Pazmino there at LaGuardia.A lot of people trying to get home.Thanks so much.If you've booked a flight on Spirit, what do you do?All right, I spoke with aviation reporter for The Points Guy last hour, and here's what he suggested to get a refund.

This morning, Spirit has put out a notice on its website and said that it will be automatically processing refunds for canceled flights.Of course, though, you know, it's kind of a dicey situation because you're talking about an airline that, you know, had major cash flow issues, obviously at the heart of what has happened here overnight.So, you know, if you don't get a refund from Spirit.If you don't have any luck, we are suggesting right now that if you pay with a credit card, go ahead and request a charge back with that credit card.Basically, tell your credit card company that you didn't receive the thing that you paid for, that thing being a flight, of course.And there are some federal protections in place to ensure you get that money back from your credit card company.

In the short term, other airlines, talking Allegiant, United, Frontier, they've offered special fares for passengers left stranded.With me now is aviation reporterfor the points guy Sean Cudahy.Sean, good morning to you first.What happens to those thousands of passengers who are waiting for a flight to get back home?

Yeah, they're kind of out of luck this morning, unfortunately.Now, the good news is that some of the other U .S.airlines have said that they will cap fares, in some case doing discounted fares on routes where they go head to head with Spirit or I guess where they did go head to head with Spirit.So, you know, there's going to be an opportunity to rebook and not pay those exorbitant last minute, you know, ticket prices.But, you know, make no mistake, this is not good news across the industry for for consumers.

Yeah, certainly they won't have to pay those walk up fares, which are probably much higher than anything they would have found online.What about the flight attendants and the pilots who are not back in their home cities?

Yeah, other airlines, a number of other airlines have said that they will basically extend the privileges that they give to their employees to kind of move them around the country around the world.They will extend those to spirit employees.So if you've got flight attendants, pilots that are in the wrong city, and certainly there's a lot of them at this hour with the airline kind of abruptly shutting down overnight, they're going to open up seats, jump seats on their planes to try to get them back to the right cities after the shutdown just a few hours ago here.

Obviously, this doesn't come out of nowhere, right?There was a talk a week ago about a potential bailout.This is the second bankruptcy for Spirit Airlines.What will be the implications for the rest of the industry and the flying public?And are we already seeing any of that?

Yeah, I think that the big concern is when it comes to airfare.You know, even if you're someone who, you know, never flew Spirit, never stepped on one of its yellow planes, you know, you benefited from Spirit because these ultra low cost carriers, they tend to put pressure on the big airlines to, you know,fares in check.You know, we still have a couple of low cost airlines, you know, frontier airlines kind of most notably.But, you know, the industry on, you know, that sector of the industry is definitely smaller.And, you know, at a time when fuel prices are already putting huge upward pressure on airfare.

You know, we've seen, you know, 15 20 % spikes in airfare this summer.I think there's a lot of concern, especially in markets where spirit had a significant presence that, um, that consumers could be dealing with higher ticket prices, you know, kind of long term.

And so for people who were not waiting for a flight but had a flight booked, do they get their money back?

Spirit says that they will.So this morning, Spirit has put out a notice on its website and said that it will be automatically processing refunds for canceled flights.Of course, though, you know, it's kind of a dicey situation because you're talking about an airline that, you know, had major cash flow issues, obviously, at the heart of what has happened here overnight.So, you know, if you don't get a refund from Spirit.If you if you don't have any luck, we are suggesting right now that you know if you pay with a credit card, go ahead and request a charge back with that credit card.Basically tell your credit card company that you know that you didn't receive the thing that you paid for.

That thing being a flight, of course, and you know there are some federal protections in place to ensure you get that money back from your credit card company.You know, I think that's sort of the best bet at this point.A lot of travel insurance plans likely not going to cover insolvency cancellations from an airline, so you know there are protections.for consumers, but not as many as there normally would be if your flight was canceled because of maintenance or something like that.

14 ,000 spirit employees, the rest are contractors of the 17 ,000.Are the shortages across the industry significant enough where they can absorb some of these flight attendants, some of these pilots, or are these people gonna have to look for jobs in other industries?

Yeah, I think that kind of remains to be seen.You know, we have seen a number of airlines slow hiring this year because of the sky high jet fuel costs that they're dealing with.You know, it kind of depends on on what what you know.part of what role we're talking about.Certainly, there is a major need across the industry for more aircraft mechanics, highly specialized roles.I'm sure that there will be opportunities for those workers.

And I think it's a big industry, and I think that there will be opportunities.We've heard some airlines say that they're going to give preferential interviews to spirit candidates that were affected by this.But I do think that we are dealing with, unfortunately, a very difficult situation for these employees.out of really no fault of their own that they've come into this situation.

Take a listen to some of the frustrated passengers we encountered this morning.

I just got here and the people that were standing here just said, there's no flights, spare one out of business.

So you're going to Orlando and you get here this morning and I found it odd, I did.

I saw the notices, didn't really think about it, walked right by them.And I went to the kiosk and I typed in my information and they're like, oh yeah, your flight has been canceled, find an agent.So I was looking for an agent, they were like, there's no agent, there's no customer service.