Spirit Airlines stopped flying overnight on May 2, and within days a TikTok clip turned into one of the biggest fan-driven money pushes of the year. The Let’s Buy Spirit campaign, started by creator Hunter Peterson, collected about $88 million in nonbinding pledges from tens of thousands of people who want a crowd-owned airline. Almost every analyst who has reviewed the plan says it cannot work. Here is why it took off anyway.
What Is the Let’s Buy Spirit Campaign?
Hunter Peterson, a Los Angeles voice actor who posts as Hi There Hunter, floated the idea in a short video days after Spirit shut down. He was half joking at first.
His math was simple. If a small share of American adults each chipped in the price of one cheap ticket, roughly $30 to $40, the crowd could own the airline outright.
Peterson then built LetsBuySpiritAir.com, where visitors could log a pledge. Traffic crashed the page more than once. By Monday, promised funds had reached about $88 million, though none of it is binding and no money has changed hands.
Why Spirit Airlines Shut Down
Spirit halted service without warning. Jets were parked, every flight was scrapped, and customers were told to stay away from terminals. Thousands of employees lost work in a single day.
The collapse had been building for years. The airline went through more than one bankruptcy filing. Merger talks with JetBlue and then Frontier both fell apart. A $500 million government rescue package collapsed, and fuel prices climbed sharply and stayed high.
President and CEO Dave Davis said the fast, lasting jump in fuel costs left the company no option other than an orderly shutdown. The cheap-fare model carried almost no cushion to absorb cost shocks.
Why the Let’s Buy Spirit Idea Caught On
Spirit took plenty of jokes about add-on fees and tight rows. The reaction to its closure told a different story. Ultra-low-cost carriers pull fares down across entire routes, which helps even travelers who never book with them.
With Spirit gone, many flyers expect fewer options and weaker price competition. Household budgets are already under pressure, a squeeze that shows up in employee burnout statistics and in how workers structure their time, including growing interest in four-day workweek trials.
Cheap fares also matter to people who build travel into their work life. Data on digital nomads and independent workers shows millions of Americans now move around for work, and budget carriers made that lifestyle affordable.
One pilot’s farewell message spread widely after the final flights. He talked about friendships built over fourteen years and how only the good memories seemed to stick. That clip did as much for the campaign as any spreadsheet.
What Buying Spirit Airlines Would Actually Take
Spirit operated about 200 jets before the closure, mostly Airbus A320-family aircraft, one of the largest ultra-low-cost fleets in North America. Most of those planes now sit in storage yards.
Waking them up would require billions in funding, fresh FAA sign-off, and years of hiring and certification work. The pledge total does not come close.
Pledged Funds vs Estimated Creditor Claims
Can Let’s Buy Spirit Really Bring the Airline Back?
Aviation and finance specialists say no. Kevin Thompson, CEO of 9i Capital Group, calls the drive a decent but purely symbolic act. He repeats the old industry line that the way to end up a millionaire in aviation is to start as a billionaire.
Thompson argues that ordinary backers underestimate how brutal airline economics are: wafer-thin margins, huge capital needs, and profits that rarely last. Every carrier sits closer to the edge than most people assume.
Drew Powers, founder of Powers Financial Group in Illinois, ran the numbers. Even at $100 million, the pot would cover only 3 to 5 percent of what creditors would want, and nobody who pledged is obligated to pay a cent.
Powers does think the demand for cheap seats is real. Families cut back almost everywhere else before dropping holidays, and inflation makes budget fares matter more. Similar spending shifts appear in hybrid work data, where flexible schedules free people to travel midweek when fares are lowest.
What Happens to Let’s Buy Spirit Now
Spirit has said it will sell off remaining assets after several failed Chapter 11 attempts, so the campaign will most likely stay a viral moment rather than a purchase. Spirit itself has confirmed it has no connection to the drive and has not endorsed it.
Thompson notes the emotion runs deeper than fares. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of livelihoods sat inside one company, a reminder of how work and identity intertwine, something researchers tracking workplace productivity trends see across industries. For now, this reads less like a comeback and more like a final stop.
FAQs
What is the Let’s Buy Spirit campaign?
Let’s Buy Spirit is a crowdfunding drive started by TikTok creator Hunter Peterson after Spirit Airlines shut down on May 2. It collected about $88 million in nonbinding pledges to relaunch the carrier as a publicly owned airline.
Who started the Let’s Buy Spirit crowdfunding drive?
Hunter Peterson, a Los Angeles voice actor and video creator who posts as Hi There Hunter, started the campaign through a short video and the website LetsBuySpiritAir.com days after Spirit stopped flying.
How much money has Let’s Buy Spirit raised?
The campaign logged roughly $88 million in pledges by Monday. All pledges are nonbinding, meaning no actual money has been collected and no backer is legally required to pay anything.
Why did Spirit Airlines go out of business?
Spirit collapsed after years of financial strain, multiple bankruptcy filings, failed mergers with JetBlue and Frontier, a collapsed $500 million government rescue, and a sharp, lasting rise in fuel prices.
Could the Let’s Buy Spirit plan actually work?
Experts say no. Even $100 million would cover only 3 to 5 percent of creditor claims, and restarting 200 stored jets would need billions in funding, FAA approval, and years of rebuilding.
