Spirit Airlines closed Saturday after 34 years of service. In response, a former passenger launched an initiative called Spirit 2.0 the night after the shutdown.
Hunter Petersonwho once flew Spirit Airlines for 24 hours straight, enthusiastically shared a post on his website where he called for the purchase of Spirit Airlines.
“This started as a joke and is quickly getting out of control in the best way possible,” he added.
According to , Peterson was referring to ordinary people, including former employees and passengers. The movement is called Spirit 2.0 and is encouraging people to come together to buy the airline before private capital does.
“Private equity funds are already scrounging around the wreckage. But before they take over the company, there is a window of opportunity for something that has never happened in commercial aviation,” he said in Spirit 2.0’s statement.
Millions of people have seen Peterson’s social media posts where he lays out his idea and visited the website, which he says he created in an hour and which is constantly crashing.
The idea is inspired by the model of Green Bay Packers. The Packers are the only publicly traded, non-profit NFL team. Instead of a single billionaire owner, the team is owned by 538,967 shareholders.
Peterson began accepting non-binding declarations of intent from interested parties. By Sunday afternoon, he had received statements totaling almost 23 million dollars of 36,605 people.
Peterson targets commitments worth 1.7 billion dollars. In turn, Spirit 2.0 has not yet raised any actual money.
Spirit Airlines was known for its low costs and served passengers throughout the United States for 34 years.
The airline’s collapse came after a few years marked by furloughs, layoffs, pay cuts, bankruptcies and, more recently, a bailout. 500 million dollars of the failed Trump administration.
The airline’s collapse affects about 17 thousand employeesand many passengers were forced to book new flights.
Other airlines took the opportunity to help stranded Spirit Airlines passengers. United Airlines is offering guaranteed maximum price tickets for travelers who had to cancel their flights at the last minute, and American Airlines is offering guaranteed maximum price fares on routes that overlap with Spirit Airlines.
Finally, Peterson, who calls himself the potential new CEO of Spirit Airlines, said he’s surprised that what started as a joke has touched so many people.
