Spirit Airlines gave up the ghost this week.
President Trump wanted to provide a lifeline to the company so that it could survive long enough for a necessary restructuring. JetBlue offered to enter into a merger with the company to resurrect the failed airline. But U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) persisted in the spirit of “government knows best”, and she blocked the merger.
So, Spirit Airlines has released its spirit, so to speak, crucified by bad management, poor professionalism, customer rejection, and just plain bad timing. None of us can ignore that fuel costs have increased due to the war in Iran. Then again, no one can lay the demise of this airline on Trump and his welcome military efforts to disarm the radical Iranian regime and its nuclear ambitions.
Spirit Airlines was doomed to fail due to years of failure. Their closure occurs not a moment too soon, in my view.
The bad service, the unprofessional staff, and the limited options available to customers all militantly undermined the airline’s chances of survival. And the examples of the evil spirit that possessed this business cannot be overstated. Who can forget the obscene shouting match between two Spirit employees, laced with vulgarity, all caught on camera by one of the customers waiting for service? The exchange went viral, and Spirit Airlines should have issued an immediate press release, apology, and two termination letters. Did anything happen?
Check out this mosh-pit riot that broke out outside of a Spirit Airlines departure gate. This was not a one-off outbreak, by the way. In this video, in which another fight broke out at a Spirit Airlines counter, the passengers lost their cool over the cancellation of a flight.
And was it just one flight that got cancelled? Spirit Airlines had a reputation for flight cancellations and delays!
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In January 2026 alone, One Mile at a Time cited Spirit Airlines for numerous cancellations and delays:
- On Thursday, January 1, 2026, Spirit canceled 11 percent of flights and delayed 38 percent of flights
- On Friday, January 2, 2026, Spirit canceled 14 percent of flights and delayed 33 percent of flights
- On Saturday, January 3, 2026, Spirit canceled nine percent of flights and
- delayed three percent of flights
These failures all took place just at the beginning of the year, and only got worse. All of this before the war with Iran, mind you.
No wonder there’s an entire Facebook group dedicated to exposing Spirit Airlines’ horrible service!
Of course, there’s a bigger spirit, or rather, a policy problem, with the failure of this business, and it deserves more attention. Normally, a business failure wouldn’t engage so much attention, but our political class has turned this bankruptcy into a political problem—and that in itself is a problem.
Government intervention and overreach, and it comes from both sides, must be called out and cast out.
First, President Trump was seeking to bail out the company. Bad move, Trump. Huge mistake. Free enterprise is an exacting and effective taskmaster, and that is a good thing. If the customers don’t want to pay, if they see no value in the company, then the shareholders and CEO need to adapt, or the company goes bust. Let them fly or fail on their own merits. Government intervention would not have helped that business.
President Trump is making unforced errors with these government-based interventions, by the way. While airlines remain an essential industry, and we don’t want foreign adversaries dominating this field, our domestic airline firms must compete for the dollar of every American customer. If they can’t get the job done, then they need to land once and for all.
How many times do we have to see this attempt at government-run failure play out in our country? The United States government dabbled in running the fur trade, providing telegraph services, and offering steamship travel, and they all failed to their privately-owned competitors. Government ownership, intervention, or subsidy ensures failure. It’s free enterprise that ensures success, and American prosperity is built on that. Europe, Africa, and most of Asia regulate their businesses into irrelevance and bare subsistence. Why adopt their bad policies, Donald?
To his credit, President Trump has done wonders in shrinking the federal workforce, gutting entire departments, shutting down the corporate bribery masquerading as foreign aid, and pushing for restoration of law and order, including border control and the end to mass immigration, legal and illegal. However, he shouldn’t take those wins as a justification to invade the domestic economy and prop up failing industries. This temptation is a lingering problem with the MAGA coalition, and the Republican Party after Trump must excise these anti-free market tendencies from success in future administrations. Those corrections must include getting the federal government out of the computer chip business, reducing investment in AI development, and easing off tariffs that are propping up failing domestic companies just to protect jobs during an election year.
Of course, the Democratic Party doesn’t have clean hands when it comes to mucking the free market. Obamacare and all its failures alone stand as a testimony to Democratic fantasies that more government can make a product or service better. Regarding the Spirit Airlines fiasco, they have their hands all over this, as well. As expected, during the Biden Administration, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg and US Senator Elizabeth Warren urged government intervention against a potential merger of Spirit Airlines with JetBlue. Four years later, with Trump in the White House, the U.S. senator doubled down on her opposition, making it clear that she doesn’t want any victories for the current administration in saving Spirit Airlines. Of course, those efforts are moot, since current Secretary of Transportation Sean Duffy is offering assistance for stranded travelers and unemployed staff following the airline’s closure.
She opposed the merger, which would have granted a suitable, free-enterprise-based lifeline to Spirit Airlines. Of course, for all her talk about protecting the consumers, her frustration with the merger allows a very limited airline oligopoly to persist, meaning less competition and quality control. All such government interventions against mergers are despicable. Why should the federal government, or any government, have the final say on whether two private businesses can join forces, cut their costs, and improve their productivity? Private monopolies don’t last long when innovators find cheaper ways to provide better service. Customers always win, and job prospects increase with economic freedom instead of government intervention.
The spirit of free enterprise makes America great. We shouldn’t let any politician or administration exorcise what animates the great prosperity of this country.
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