Kamal Ghorui
Spirit Airlines announced on May 2 that it was closing all operations.
Spirit Airlines turned out to be so popular that after the announcement of its demise, a website created to buy and revive Spirit Airlines crashed because of overwhelming response from the people who want to pledge money to save the airline from biting dust. Hunter Peterson, a TikToker, started the website to crowdfund Spirit Airlines after the airlines announced on May 2 that it was ceasing operations. The company cited financial hardships owing to rising fuel prices and canceled all flights announcing that their customer service is also shut down.“Sustaining the business required hundreds of millions of additional dollars of liquidity that Spirit simply does not have and could not procure. This is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted,” Spirit President and CEO Dave Davis said in a statement.Peterson released a video proposing that people should pool money to keep Spirit Airlines flying and the site crashed within a few days. “This is a genius idea: We nationalize Spirit Airlines,” Peterson said in the video. “Owned by the people. Airlines gone. We make a new airline.”letsbuyspiritair.com allowed interested patrons to pledge a share into the proposed ownership of Spirit Airlines which did not involve money but just an expression of interest. “This started as a joke and this is rapidly going out of control in the best possible way,” Peterson said in a TikTok video after the website was posted.The website now (May 4) says there were 124,755 founding patrons who pledged a total of $88,071,428, unverified by the website authorities with an average pledge size of $667. “The movement grew so fast it overwhelmed our servers. We are upgrading infrastructure right now and will be back with full pledge functionality within 24–48 hours. You can still browse the site. Pledges are temporarily disabled. Follow us for real-time updates on when pledges reopen,” the site read.In a TikTok video posted on May 3, Peterson said he was looking to connect with developers to upgrade the pledge website, public relations professionals to manage news outreach, lawyers who have experience in aviation and airline executives who can provide much needed details.
Why is Hunter Peterson interested in saving Spirit Airlines?
Peterson flew on Spirit for 24 hours straight to create content. In a YouTube video with about 93,000 views, Peterson visited five of Spirit’s busiest airports, only counting the amount of time he was on a plane as part of the project.
