Spirit Collapse Follows Liberal Block of JetBlue Deal
Senator Warren, one of the masterminds of blocking the merger, was out this week, blaming “spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war” as the nail in the coffin.
Seventeen thousand workers are out of a job. Thousands of travelers are stranded. The United States just witnessed its first major airline collapse in nearly a quarter-century.
The media will tell you this is a story about jet fuel prices. It isn’t. It’s a story about what happens when the federal government blocks deals it has no business blocking and then acts surprised when the wreckage piles up.
In 2024, Spirit sought a merger with JetBlue as a lifeline. Was Spirit a perfectly run airline? No. It had filed for bankruptcy twice and was carrying real structural problems. But the merger was its legitimate last shot.
Neither carrier was a major player. Neither posed any serious threat to competition. The Biden DOJ sued to block it anyway, led by FTC Chair Lina Khan and CFPB Director Rohit Chopra, the latter being the brainchild of Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA), who has never met a market she didn’t want to strangle.
Jessica Melugin of the Competitive Enterprise Institute warned at the time:
“Blocking a merger of smaller competitors trying to combine resources and scale up to compete with the top four airlines makes little sense. It risks making both Spirit and JetBlue less able to compete… and ultimately leaving the airline industry less competitive, harming consumers.”
Senator Warren, one of the masterminds of blocking the merger, was out this week, blaming “spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war” as the nail in the coffin.
Spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war was the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted Spirit airline.
FWIW, JetBlue merger failed because a judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan, said the deal was illegal.
Republicans are desperate to shift blame from higher costs hitting families.
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) May 2, 2026
This is the same Elizabeth Warren who celebrated the merger block in 2024, as the Community Note ironically pointed out, tweeting:
I've warned for months that a @JetBlue–@SpiritAirlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares.@JusticeATR and @USDOT were right to stand up for consumers and fight against runaway airline consolidation.
This is a Biden win for flyers! https://t.co/lJFGS3ucv3
— Elizabeth Warren (@SenWarren) March 6, 2024
Of course, media outlets like the AP didn’t even mention Elizabeth Warren and all her liberal pals and gave them cover.
Y’all dropped something https://t.co/O3Cdrbip6M pic.twitter.com/B3vOnlYduJ
— Ben Smith (@BenSmithDC) May 2, 2026
You absolute hack. You unbelievable, unfathomable, hack. https://t.co/6saccO4prG
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) May 2, 2026
Spirit has gone bankrupt *twice* since the merger was stopped by Biden and this judge, which you celebrated.
The exodus of pilots has been going on for well over a year. Rumors of a shutdown have been long-running.
You and your party ensured this would happen. Own it, Liz. https://t.co/QHj5EwcKiq
— Bonchie (@bonchieredstate) May 2, 2026
A Biden win for flyers. Seventeen thousand people just lost their jobs. How’s that win looking now?
Photo 1: A woman who complained about the Major Airlines not having enough competition.
Photo 2: A woman who literally killed the Major Airline’s competition. pic.twitter.com/eSCihDAZmJ
— C3 (@C_3C_3) May 2, 2026
Yes, jet fuel costs have nearly doubled since conflict broke out with Iran. Analysts called it “the final nail in the coffin.”
But coffins require a body first. The Biden DOJ put the body there. The fuel crisis just closed the lid.
As for the bailout: Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy was right to call it “good money after bad.” He also immediately went to Twitter to explain how they would help those affected by the airline’s collapse.
In coordination with our airline partners, we’re taking ACTION to bring relief to Spirit customers and its workforce.
From capped ticket prices for flyers who need to rebook to employees looking for job opportunities, there’s a lot of information you should be aware of.…
— Secretary Sean Duffy (@SecDuffy) May 2, 2026
The Trump administration inherited this mess. Taxpayers have no obligation to subsidize the consequences of the last administration’s regulatory malpractice.
The bottom line: markets work when you let them. Block the tools companies use to adapt, and you don’t protect anyone. You just guarantee the outcome you claimed to be preventing.
Spirit announced its wind-down “with great disappointment.”
That disappointment belongs at the feet of the regulators who caused it.
The last comparable shutdown came after September 11, a catastrophe nobody could have prevented. This one was a choice.
They made it. We’re all paying for it.
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Comments
Reckon the Democrats are no longer the party of the worker and small businesses, if they ever really were.
“Bonchie” is right. Lieawatha is a complete, unfathomable hack.
Democrats haven’t been the party of the working man for decades. They’ve been the party of the nonworking man: both the welfare vacuums and the dynastically wealthy.
Jokeahantas strikes again.
The antitrust laws were enacted purely out of jealousy by people just like Fauxcahontas, who are just mean people with mean characters, who hate seeing other people prosper. They hated John D Rockefeller because he was so rich, and for no other reason, so they cooked up this law to bring him low.
They manufactured an economic case against him that never had any basis in fact, making up stories about him deliberately selling at a loss in order to drive out competitors and then raising his prices once they were gone.
That never happened, and it makes no sense for it to happen — the larger a business is the less it can afford to operate at a loss, because just as its volume lets it turn a tiny profit margin into a huge profit, so it turns even a tiny loss margin into a huge and unaffordable loss. And without high barriers to entry it can never recoup those losses, because as soon as it raises its prices someone else will rush in to undercut them. To keep competitors out a business must constantly keep its prices as low as possible, and that’s what Standard Oil did.
It’s the basic economics of capitalism: If you can’t (or won’t) compete, you fail, and both you and those who might have been your customers miss out. The current crop of socialists take advantage of the loud, ignorant, chattering fools who were too lazy to pay attention in school and think “there will be pie in the sky by-and-by”. That pie is still in the oven and look up! That appliance will land squarely on your head.
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idk… the debt from the merger may have simply brought down two companies instead of one. Now Jet Blue can go after Spirit’s business cheaper (buying the routes and the planes etc).
Personally, I would always rather pick the best bits out of a bankrupt competitor than merge with a dumpster fire. The tradeoff is that now *everyone else* can go after Spirits business too. Jet Blue declined to merge this time, as did others, which makes me think there was not much there worth picking.
Exactly. 👍🏻
thats the point
its not the governments job to decide that
maybe the debt would have refinanced etc etc
Chief Smelly Beaver is a pro at using her CFRB baby as a hammer then claiming it was someone elses fault and only her and the Dems can fix it.
How does she “use” “her” CFRB? It was her idea to establish it, and she shepherded it through Congress and into law, but she doesn’t control it. She doesn’t tell it what to do.
Her responsibility here is vicarious; she created the monster that made the decision, and she trumpeted her support for that decision, but she didn’t actually participate in making it.
I refuse to mourn the passing of Spirit Airlines, an awful company with an awful business model that could not survive in the free market.
I will, however, miss the highly entertaining YouTube videos of their equally awful clientele having tantrums when they’re not treated as though they’re flying first class on Emirates.
As to Warren, y’all didn’t actually expect any different, did ya?
“awful” business model or as you correctly note their clientals welfare like mentality that demands the first class treatment??
low cost cheap etc is also a hallmark of capitalism b/c it severs the needs of some
state owned airlines/ companies are no better ,,and worse off,,b/c of the governments favoritism etc
I liked them when they first started, but then they turned awful .
They were a legacy of People Express, who pioneered unbundled charges for food, baggage, etc. that are now standard throughout the industry. though $3 for an extra bag has become $100. Their cross-trained owner-employees created unheard levels 0f productivity. Alas, they expanded too rapidly and created too much complexity in their operations for the model to survive. New low-fare carriers remind me of the socialist mantra–no one’s done it right yet.
This is my concern – how to put this delicately? The people who predominated in Spirit’s customer base will now create a diaspora into other airlines. Think of the forced busing of school children.
lefty has it made
when they block the mergers they and their msm mouthpieces define it as protecting the workers and the consumers
when the bk happens its b/c maga types exist
we must retake the school system in america if we are to put even a small dent in the communistnazi takeover that is only gaining strength
Elizabeth Warren is Marxist Harvard a-hole, and a carpetbagger. She’s done absolutely NOTHING for Massachusetts.
Don’t forget that 2028 presidential contender and perennial incompetent WEF alumni Pete Pot Hole Buttface also had a hand in Spirits decline when he theoretically was in charge of Transportation and celebrated the merger failure,
Opposing a merger with Jet Blue didn’t serve any legitimate antitrust purpose. At best the merger would have created a new combined entity that was still far, far smaller in market share than the big 4 airlines. More companies competing for market share, creating more consumer choice (aka capitalism) should be the basis for legitimate use of antitrust.