{"id":785,"date":"2026-07-07T20:43:25","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T20:43:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=785"},"modified":"2026-07-07T20:43:25","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T20:43:25","slug":"how-both-biden-and-trump-helped-kill-spirit-airlines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=785","title":{"rendered":"How Both Biden and Trump Helped Kill Spirit Airlines"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In May, ultra-low-fare Spirit Airlines\u00a0\u00a0that it would ground all flights and shut down, effective immediately. That happened despite “extensive and comprehensive efforts to restructure the business” and “create a sustainable path forward,” the airline explained in a press release.<\/p>\n

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Government meddling helped doom Spirit’s attempts to save itself. In July 2022, JetBlue\u00a0announced\u00a0that it would acquire Spirit for $3.8 billion. Spirit, which had long thrived on low fares and high profit margins, struggled since the COVID-19 pandemic, and JetBlue’s offer was a last-ditch effort. The Biden administration sued to stop the merger, fearing that a combined carrier would leave too few low-cost competitors. “Spirit’s presence in a market forces other air carriers, including JetBlue, to lower their fares,” the Justice Department\u00a0explained.<\/p>\n

The government prevailed. In January 2024, a federal court blocked the deal as anticompetitive. “To those dedicated customers of Spirit, this one’s for you,”\u00a0\u00a0U.S. District Judge William G. Young. Jonathan Kanter, then the assistant attorney general in charge of the Justice Department’s Antitrust Division,\u00a0called\u00a0it “a victory for U.S. travelers who deserve lower prices and better choices.”<\/p>\n

It wasn’t a victory for Spirit, which declared\u00a0bankruptcy\u00a0later that year and again in 2025. Then, in February 2026, President Donald Trump launched a war against Iran,\u00a0sending\u00a0oil and gas prices skyward. Between February and May, the price of jet fuel nearly\u00a0doubled, rising from $2.12 to $4.16 per gallon.<\/p>\n

Announcing the end of operations, Spirit cited “the recent material increase in oil prices and other pressures on the business.” But the airline was in dire straits even before the war began.<\/p>\n

Read more Can You Hate the Government and Still Love America?<\/a><\/p>\n

Weeks before the war,\u00a0The Air Current<\/em>\u00a0reported\u00a0that “at least two major U.S. airlines” expected Spirit to shutter within days. Frontier Airlines, which had offered to buy Spirit before JetBlue’s offer won out,\u00a0reopened\u00a0talks in December 2025, but Spirit again\u00a0rejected\u00a0its offer. “Spirit could have survived if they had accepted our agreement and merged with us,” former Frontier CEO Barry Biffle\u00a0told\u00a0Forbes<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Airline industry expert Gary Leff\u00a0thought\u00a0it would have been a mistake for JetBlue to buy Spirit, but only because the Justice Department had also sued to kill a previously approved\u00a0partnership\u00a0with American Airlines that would have let JetBlue access larger markets. “It was a bad antitrust theory,” Leff wrote, that treated such partnerships as illegal “rather than looking at consumer benefit or total competition in the market.”<\/p>\n

No single factor is wholly responsible for Spirit’s failure. But any postmortem should note how two successive presidential administrations exacerbated the struggling carrier’s misfortunes.<\/p>\n

Read more Europe, A.C., and the Housing Exception to America\u2019s Economic Success Story<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No single factor is wholly responsible for the low-cost airline’s failure, but the government certainly didn’t help.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":784,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-deregulation"],"yoast_head":"\nHow Both Biden and Trump Helped Kill Spirit Airlines - Pioneer Relocation News<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=785\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How Both Biden and Trump Helped Kill Spirit Airlines - Pioneer Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"No single factor is wholly responsible for the low-cost airline's failure, but the government certainly didn't help.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\/?p=785\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Pioneer Relocation News\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2026-07-07T20:43:25+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"admin\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=785#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=785\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"admin\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/e60d53b4e81d520eba9c5a81b6b7778a\"},\"headline\":\"How Both Biden and Trump Helped Kill Spirit Airlines\",\"datePublished\":\"2026-07-07T20:43:25+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=785\"},\"wordCount\":476,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=785#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2026\\\/07\\\/cf064f9cd3ef4c5765c58583db7f30cd.jpg\",\"articleSection\":[\"Deregulation\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=785#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=785\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/pioneerrelocationnews.com\\\/?p=785\",\"name\":\"How Both Biden and Trump Helped Kill Spirit Airlines - 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