The yellow planes are now a memory. And the means of transportation for everyday Americans has been cut off.

It's been 34 years. Starting in 1990, Spirit Airlines, which once employed 17,000 people and flew yellow planes across the U.S. and even to Peru, has finally shut down.

At 3 AM on Saturday, May 2, all flights were canceled, and customer service was halted.

The last flight came in from Detroit to Dallas Fort Worth.

I often used Spirit when traveling to LA because the flights from Dallas to Las Vegas were quite cheap, even for direct routes.

Honestly, the seats were cramped and the service was lacking. But that wasn't the main issue.

Having a one-way ticket for $89 versus not having one is a completely different world.

While the media has offered various analyses, the facts make it clear.

Spirit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in November 2024 and again in August 2025.

With debts of $8.1 billion and assets of $8.6 billion, the cumulative losses since COVID have exceeded $2.5 billion.

However, the final blow was the skyrocketing jet fuel prices due to the war in Iran. The business model of low-cost airlines is simple.

They survive on fuel cost margins. When fuel prices rise, full-service airlines can absorb the costs through business class margins, but ULCCs (ultra-low-cost carriers) have no such buffer.

That's why they fail. The Trump administration proposed a $500 million bailout at the last minute, but creditors rejected it.

They insisted that the government take a 90% stake in the company.

Creditors argued that they needed to sell the planes to recover their money, and this is how it ended.

The reason low-cost airlines are not just about "cheap tickets"

Here's a truth that politicians often fail to acknowledge. Low-cost airlines are a true means of transportation for low-income Americans and students.

Workers visiting family, restaurant employees going to see their sick parents on weekends, and state university students heading to Miami for spring break.

For these people, Delta's business class is like a story from another planet.

The story of 45-year-old air conditioning repairman Jeremiah Burton, as reported by CNBC, is symbolic.

It was his first flight. He was on his way to New Orleans because his daughter was having twins. "I just searched for the cheapest airline on Google." $500.

This is the reality. For some, Spirit was their first flight, and without that price, they might never fly in their lifetime.

In February alone, Spirit carried 1.7 million domestic passengers.

What happens if this airline disappears? Prices on the same routes will rise by 20-30%. Scholars now refer to this as the "Spirit Effect."

The Biden administration's responsibility for blocking the JetBlue merger

Here's the frustrating part. When JetBlue tried to acquire Spirit in 2023, it was blocked on antitrust grounds.

This is the result. The merger was stopped, Spirit could not survive independently, and ultimately disappeared completely. Competition did not increase; it decreased.

The dogma that big corporate mergers are bad ignores market realities. Spirit was already on the verge of collapse at that time.

If it had been absorbed by JetBlue, at least the routes and jobs would have been preserved. Now, 17,000 people have lost their jobs, and the routes have simply vanished.

This is the outcome of the decision that former Transportation Secretary Buttigieg was proud of.

I generally oppose government bailouts. The market should decide.

However, this case is one where politics ruined what the market could have handled. Blocking the merger was political, and the fluctuations in oil prices due to the war in Iran were also political. The market is not to blame.

The void left by Spirit will ultimately be filled by major airlines at higher prices.

And people like Jeremiah, whose first flight almost became their last, will return to Greyhound buses.

"The people's transportation" was genuinely the transportation for the people, but the real lesson of this incident is that it was the previous government that killed it.

Goodbye to the yellow planes that were once called bananas.