Spirit Airlines shut down operations over the weekend, canceling every scheduled flight without warning and stranding thousands of passengers at airports across the country. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent wasted no time pointing fingers: this was the Biden administration’s doing.
“This is just more of the mess we inherited from the Biden administration,” Bessent said Sunday on social media. “Thanks to Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, and all of their friends in the Biden Administration who backed their enthusiastic opposition to the Spirit-JetBlue merger, dozens of regional airports will now lose service, and thousands of jobs will now be lost.”
The collapse is expected to cost at least 15,000 workers their jobs, according to Reuters. Viral videos showed deserted Spirit check-in counters at airports from Orlando to Newark.
The low-cost carrier had dozens of routes connecting mid-size and smaller cities, including nonstop service between Dallas-Fort Worth, Baltimore, Fort Lauderdale, Nashville, New Orleans, and Newark. Those routes are now gone.
The collapse traces directly to a March 2024 court ruling that blocked Spirit’s proposed merger with JetBlue. The Biden Justice Department brought the case, arguing the combination would raise fares and reduce competition. A federal judge appointed by Ronald Reagan agreed, and the administration cheered.
“Today’s decision by JetBlue is yet another victory for the Justice Department’s work on behalf of American consumers,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said at the time. “The Justice Department proved in court that a merger between JetBlue and Spirit would have caused tens of millions of travelers to face higher fares and fewer choices.”
Warren went further. “I’ve warned for months that a JetBlue-Spirit Airlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares,” she posted in March 2024. “This is a Biden win for flyers!”
That quote is going to age poorly. Fares for former Spirit routes won’t just rise now. They’ll disappear entirely.
Bessent connected the dots clearly on Sunday. “If JetBlue had merged with Spirit, we would have all these jobs that were lost yesterday; we had 30 regional airports who have lost service,” he said. “The reason we were here was because the Biden Administration opposed the merger. We shouldn’t have been here in the first place.”
Warren’s response on Saturday blamed other factors. “Spiking fuel prices from Trump’s war was the nail in the coffin for twice-bankrupted Spirit airline,” she posted, adding that the merger was blocked by a Reagan-appointed judge and that “Republicans are desperate to shift blame from higher costs hitting families.”
The Trump administration had attempted a last-ditch $500 million bailout effort in recent weeks. It fell apart after disagreements between the administration and key bondholders stalled any deal.
Spirit had already filed for bankruptcy twice before this final shutdown. The airline made its business model work for years by undercutting competitors on price, connecting routes that legacy carriers ignored. For budget travelers and smaller markets, it was often the only affordable option.
