Spirit Airlines Ceases Operations After 34 Years, Leaving Passengers Stranded

going to start with that breaking news. Spirit Airlines ceasing operations after more than three decades in the skies. For years, the airline built its brand on cheap flights. You remember that? Now, it's leaving passengers scrambling to get home. The company citing financial hardships compounded by recent spikes in fuel prices, of course. You're taking a look now at the last Spirit flights making their final landings at Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, overnight. Joining me now is ABC's Morgan Norwood live at Newark Liberty International Airport and ABC News transportation reporter Clara McMichael here in our studio. Uh so, Morgan, let's start with

you. Uh Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is already addressing this. What does he say? Yeah, well, Gio, he's acknowledging just how disruptive this situation is for so many Spirit travelers from coast to coast. And then also urging them not to even show up or bother showing up to the airport. Uh just saying that it could just take some time, a few days to get all of this sorted out. He also said that call centers for Spirit Airlines are closed as well. So, that leaves passengers scrambling, of course, to get answers, but he said the refunds will be handed through a handled through a liquidation process that could take some days. Uh he was also quick to point out that this failed merger attempt with

JetBlue and Spirit Airlines during the prior administration. He said that is partially to blame and says had that situation played out and the Biden administration pushed that deal through, he says that Spirit Airlines would be in a much better place today. But, I do want to point out that Spirit Airlines in their statement overnight said that it was the recent, quote, sudden and sustained rise in fuel prices in recent weeks that forced them to pursue this wind down of the company. Uh remember also yesterday, Gio, the president said uh and insisted that the White House was still weighing a deal. Here's what I asked uh Secretary Sean Duffy about why that deal broke down, and here's what he had to say.

The president was like a dog on a bone uh trying to figure out a way uh to keep Spirit afloat. Uh he was concerned about the employees of Spirit. In the end, this was a creditor issue. Again, they have the final say of whether they want to do a deal with the government. But, also from the government's perspective, um we oftentimes don't have a half a billion dollars laying around in a spare account that we can uh put into a bailout of a of an airline. Yeah, so here we are. He says that there are efforts underway to help displaced uh Spirit employees find jobs with other airlines, Gio. Yeah, that's such a concern, the employees, but also, of course, Morgan, the concern is about the

passengers. So, let's bring Clara in here because what do all of these passengers do? They have tickets already booked. What do they do? Yeah, so there were 277 Spirit flights scheduled for today. And so, that's going to be a lot of people, thousands of people who now have to figure out what they're going to do. Uh one piece of good news is that Spirit says that if you booked your original Spirit ticket uh with a credit or debit card, you will get a full refund. But, the question is how to get back home. So, lots of these passengers will be checking out their options with other airlines. Some are offering some discounted fares, but it's just going to be an enormous amount of people who are

all in this predicament right now and uh you know, not a lot of seats on planes. So, it's going to be a frustrating few days. 277 flights, that's a lot of people. Morgan, let's go back to you because I hope that uh a whole lot of passengers didn't show up there hoping for a flight and then found out this news. But, did you see any passengers there for Spirit? What are they saying about it all? Yeah, Gio, you hope, you know, that certainly did happen. I saw some passengers show up here, and they were frustrated to find out that uh they were essentially being turned away. Some even said that they didn't know that Spirit

shut down uh because they were looking for the Spirit terminal, and all of the signage had been removed overnight. So, they didn't even know uh that Spirit Airlines uh had shut down. So, they had a lot of questions. I spoke with one gentleman who said that he was actually headed home to South Carolina to take care of a family emergency. Needed to get there pretty quickly. Had an early morning flight. Uh he went to two different terminals before he was able to find a flight back home. But, he's not taking off until later this afternoon. He also had to pay an extra $500, and now he's scrambling to try to figure out how he can get that money back. Oh my gosh, yeah, such a predicament. Morgan Norwood there at

Newark, Clara McMichael here in the studio. Thank you both for joining us on this day here.