Spirit Airlines announced on May 2 that it would close all operations.
Spirit Airlines turned out to be so popular that after its demise was announced, a website created to buy and revive Spirit Airlines crashed due to the overwhelming response from people wanting to pledge money to save the airline from the biting dust.
TikToker Hunter Peterson launched a crowdfunding website for Spirit Airlines after the airline announced on May 2 that it would cease operations. The company cited financial difficulties due to high fuel prices and canceled all flights, announcing that its customer service was also closed.“Sustaining the business requires hundreds of millions of additional dollars in liquidity that Spirit simply does not have and cannot obtain.
“This is extremely disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted,” Dave Davis, Spirit’s president and CEO, said in a statement.Peterson released a video suggesting that people should pool money to keep Spirit Airlines flying and the site went down in a few days. “This is a genius idea: We are nationalizing Spirit Airlines,” Peterson said in the video. “Owned by the people. The airlines are gone. We’ve created a new airline.”Letsbuyspiritair.com allowed interested beneficiaries to pledge a stake in the proposed ownership of Spirit Airlines which did not involve money but merely an expression of interest.
“It started as a joke and it quickly spiraled out of control in the best way possible,” Peterson said in a TikTok video after the site was posted.The site now (May 4) says there are 124,755 founding patrons who have pledged a total of $88,071,428 USD, which has not been verified by site authorities, with an average pledge size of $667 USD. “The traffic has grown so quickly that it has taken over our servers. We are upgrading the infrastructure now and will be back with full pledge functionality within 24 to 48 hours.
You can still browse the site. Commitments have been temporarily disabled. Follow us to get real-time updates on when pledges will reopen.”In a TikTok video posted on May 3, Peterson said he was looking forward to connecting with developers to upgrade the pledge website, public relations professionals to manage news outreach, lawyers with aviation experience and airline executives who can provide much-needed detail.
Why is Hunter Peterson interested in saving Spirit Airlines?
Peterson flew on Spirit for 24 hours straight to create the content. In a YouTube video with nearly 93,000 views, Peterson visits five of Spirit’s busiest airports and tallies just how much time he spent on the plane as part of the project.
reconnaissance
Do you think nationalizing Spirit Airlines could be a viable solution?