Joe Biden And Donald Trump Crushed Spirit Airlines In Rare Bipartisan Effort

The recently defunct bargain basement airline Spirit was going absolutely gangbusters just over a decade ago. In 2014 the company was adding planes to its fleet, adding new routes to its itineraries, and committing $100 million to stock buybacks to keep shareholders happy. Spirit was, if you'll forgive the pun, flying high, and heralded as the fastest-growing airline in America. 

It was also one of the most poorly rated customer service experiences in any business sector. It wasn't the customer service that did it in, however, as Americans are notorious cheapskates who will put up with a lot of inconvenience to save a few bucks. Spirit's successes, and its failings, were predicated on shallow profit margin and a bottom-of-the-barrel price tag for its flights. The airline earned customers, unhappy or not, because of its cheap tickets, but those razor-thin margins meant it wasn't exactly prepared for a global pandemic decapitating the travel industry. 

To make matters worse, the company's lifeline — a merger with JetBlue — was blocked by the Biden administration's antitrust crackdown, and just a couple of years later Donald Trump's simultaneous tariff-driven inflation crisis and war-in-Iran driven oil price explosion hit the struggling airline hard enough to deliver the TKO. 

Over the course of just five years Spirit went from the stable seventh largest airline in America to completely dead. While it could have backed into a corner, held its gloves high, and stayed standing with any one of those haymakers alone, it was the one-two-three-four combo punch that really put it down for the count. This whole scenario is best summed up in the recent Wendover Productions video above, and we're going to dig into the parts Biden and Trump played a little deeper.

The Biden administration was one of the most vehemently antitrust presidencies in recent memory under Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan. In 2022 there was a deal on the table for Frontier to purchase an ailing post-COVID Spirit for just $6.6 billion. Jet Blue later floated a takeover deal with Spirit with better terms, and the board decided to chase this one instead, despite it being even more likely to lead to antitrust scrutiny. The idea with Frontier, at least, was that both airlines were focusing on cheap fares and thus wouldn't lead to a loss of inexpensive flight options, while Jet Blue would have folded Spirit's operations into its own and offered better service at higher prices, potentially pricing some American travelers out of the market. 

But Khan and the Biden Department of Justice were vehemently opposed to any reduction in airline competition, arguing that a whole Spirit was better for the industry, as competition from the cheap tickets at Spirit helped drag other airlines into offering less expensive tickets as well. And the consumer-focused hawks didn't believe Spirit fit the definition of a "failing firm," which would have allowed friendlier antitrust treatment from the DOJ. 

Following the travel restrictions from COVID, the overall downturn in travel, inflation-driven reduction in expenses, and Millennials and Gen Z choosing to YOLO their savings on higher-tier air travel (can't afford a house, might as well enjoy life, right?) Spirit was on its last legs, but still standing, when Biden left office. 

I think it's safe to say that Donald Trump's absurd experiment with punitive tariffs has been the greatest failure in American economic history since Reagan. With the American economy starting to stabilize in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, the president decided to blow up every trade deal the country has ever negotiated, including his own. With inflation remaining an issue and terrible jobs numbers, it stands to reason that leisure travel was off the table for America's working class. 

2025 was a tough round, and Spirit was beaten and bloodied having filed for bankruptcy twice, but still had enough to keep its gloves up. Then came the 2026 war with Iran and exploding fuel costs as the Strait of Hormuz closed. With Spirit dependent on thin margins to stay afloat, this jump in the expenses on its ledger was the final uppercut to ring its bell. Without another airline around to scoop Spirit up, the only opportunity for saving the company was a Trump bailout. 

Donald J. Trump's art of the deal was a handshake deal to offer Spirit a half-billion-dollar loan in exchange for federal control of 90% of the airline's shares. Understandably, Spirit's shareholders declined the offer and decided to cease operations instead. By early May the 64-year-old company was dead and its 172-plane fleet sat dormant while some 15,000 employees were out of a job. 

It's impossible to know just how things might have gone differently if the merger had been allowed. Maybe JetBlue would be fine, or the larger company would have collapsed under the weight of higher costs. What is for certain is that the United States went to war in Iran and got nothing out of it except a crumbling economy and one fewer airline.