Spirit Airlines flew its last flight on May 2, 2026. Overnight, 17,000 workers were left without jobs, pay, or benefits—many for the first time in their careers. Crew members who had spent years, sometimes decades, building seniority to earn top-out union pay and flexible schedules now have nothing. Their experience, their dedication, their labor mean nothing under capitalism’s brutal logic. Even if they find work at another carrier, which is unlikely in an industry downturn accelerated by war and speculation, they’ll start from the bottom: the lowest pay, the worst schedules, all over again.
Spirit’s collapse also devastates the hundreds of thousands of working-class passengers who depended on Spirit’s low fares. For families who already struggle to afford time off and save for months to afford a single trip to see relatives across the country, there is now simply no affordable way to fly, especially as airlines hike fares due to less competition on certain routes.
In the face of the collapse of Spirit, thousands of people across the country have taken to social media to voice their disgust. Many have called for nationalization, while some are attempting to organize a popular buy-out and relaunch Spirit on a cooperative model. These calls show that working people understand that we make the world run — and we should run the world — but we need a socialist movement to make these possibilities a reality.
Structural crises of capitalism killed Spirit
Spirit had been on shaky ground for months, surviving two bankruptcy proceedings: once in late 2024 into 2025, and again in the summer of 2025. The airline slashed its fleet, furloughed workers, and laid off thousands, but it still couldn’t generate enough cash to stay afloat.
The final blow was the spike in jet fuel prices triggered by the Trump administration’s illegal war against Iran. The conflict has led to the unprecedented extended closure of the Strait of Hormuz, halting global fuel shipments and sending energy markets into chaos. While larger carriers could weather the shock by cutting routes and squeezing workers even harder, Spirit had no margin for error.
The airline could have survived longer with a $500 million federal loan, less than what the Pentagon spends on war in a single day. Instead, the federal government — the same government that found endless billions for war, for ICE terror campaigns and tax breaks for billionaires — decided that saving thousands of jobs and preserving affordable fares wasn’t worth the investment.
Spirit’s collapse makes it abundantly clear that American air travel is organized entirely around profit, not around the needs of workers or the public. This raises a straightforward question, one that millions of people are asking as they face canceled trips, lost wages, and a future of even higher fares: Could air travel be a public good instead? The answer is yes. In fact, the foundation for public aviation already exists, we just don’t control it.
What would nationalization look like?
The U.S. aviation system was built on public investment. Air traffic control, airport construction, rural service routes, and even the aircraft themselves were developed with taxpayer money and the labor of working people. The infrastructure belongs to all of us, yet the profits flow to a small number of capitalists at the very top. The same pattern appears everywhere under capitalism: socialize the costs, privatize the gains. Spirit’s workers and passengers are now paying the price.
A nationalized airline, run as a public service under the democratic control of workers and communities, would look fundamentally different from the extraction machine that just collapsed. Routes would be maintained based on social need rather than “yield management algorithms” designed to squeeze every last dollar from passengers.
Workers would have permanent contracts, real pensions that follow them through their careers, and sectoral bargaining rights that prevent the race-to-the-bottom competition that pits worker against worker. Fares would be set based on what working people can actually afford, not the highest rates capitalists can get away with.
This is not an unrealistic dream, it’s a practical demand rooted in the reality that working people already run the aviation industry. Pilots, mechanics, flight attendants, ground crew, air traffic controllers are the people who make the industry run, while billionaires merely “own” it and extract the wealth we create.
People across the country are outraged. It is a sign of the popularity, and logic, of socialist politics that so many workers are looking toward nationalization and public management as a solution at this moment, but there is no reason to stop with this one demand. It is the capitalist system at the root of unsafe conditions, spiraling costs, and inaccessible travel.
Spirit’s collapse isn’t a story of mismanagement. Under capitalism, corporations are constantly growing and collapsing under the booms and busts of a market that serves no one except Wall Street investors. This is the same system that left TSA agents working unpaid for 46 days while ICE agents got their paychecks. The same system that lets billionaires’ investments produce emissions over a million times higher than the average person while blaming working families for the climate crisis. The same system that can find endless money for war but not $500 million to save thousands of jobs.
A socialist vision of air travel
Under a socialist government that prioritizes the needs of working people, air travel could be placed under the people’s control. Decisions about routes, safety, staffing, and sustainability would be made by the workers who know the industry best and the communities that depend on it — not by hedge funds and corporate boards speculating on our lives.
Additionally, robust investment in all forms of transit would prioritize sustainable and rapid movement of people where they need to be. The right to a dignified life means the right to visit friends and family across the country with ease and to take time off to travel with relatives and loved ones.
The capitalist alternative being offered to us by both parties is more of the same: bailouts for executives, layoffs and higher prices for workers. We don’t have to accept that. Spirit Airlines is gone, but the workers who made it run are still here. The planes are still here. The infrastructure is still here. What’s missing is the political will and organization to utilize these resources for human need instead of private profit.
A socialist future is not inevitable, workers must organize and struggle to win. But when we look at the chaos around the collapse of Spirit Airlines, when we see thousands of experienced workers thrown into precarity overnight, when we watch fares climb beyond the reach of working families, the need for that fight becomes clearer than ever. Air travel belongs to the people who make it work. It’s time to take it back.
Featured image: “N912NK Spirit Airlines Airbus A320neo-271N s/n 8038” by Tomás Del Coro, CC BY-SA 4.0
