May 5, 2026
Now boarding: bankruptcy drama
Why airlines are always going bankrupt
Spirit is dead, and commenters say the whole airline business is basically cursed
TLDR: Spirit is shutting down after years of losses, and the bigger shock is that the airline business as a whole has lost money for decades. Commenters were split between disbelief that deregulation didn’t lead to huge profits and grim nods that flying is a brutally bad business almost nobody really wins.
Spirit Airlines has officially flatlined after years of losses, failed rescue plans, and a government bailout idea that sounded so wild it barely seemed real: the U.S. nearly ended up owning 90 percent of the airline. Instead, the talks crashed, Spirit shut down, and the internet did what it does best — turned a corporate obituary into a group therapy session with jokes, history lessons, and a lot of "wait, all airlines are broke?" energy.
The stat that sent commenters spiraling came from the piece’s biggest bombshell: since airline deregulation in 1978, the industry has collectively lost $37 billion. That set off the hottest reaction in the thread, with one reader basically saying this blows up the usual story that less government control automatically means giant profits for companies. Another camp was less shocked and more smug: of course airlines are a mess, they’re expensive to run, wildly complicated, heavily regulated, and selling what many commenters treated like a near-commodity seat in the sky.
But not everyone bought the idea that all airlines are interchangeable. One commenter pushed back with a very relatable traveler take: in theory maybe they’re all the same, but in real life plenty of people have a personal blacklist. That gave the thread its funniest undercurrent — the unspoken universal meme that everyone claims airlines are identical until it’s time to book one. Meanwhile, one history-loving commenter called America’s bankruptcy system a 250-year-old stroke of genius, which is possibly the most Hacker News way imaginable to react to an airline collapse.
Key Points
- •Spirit Airlines last turned a profit in 2019, filed for Chapter 11 in November 2024 and again in August 2025, and announced a permanent shutdown in early May 2026.
- •Spirit pursued a merger with JetBlue, but the deal was blocked by a federal judge, limiting one of its main paths to survival.
- •The article cites IATA’s 2026 outlook showing airline industry return on invested capital at 6.8 percent versus an 8.2 percent weighted average cost of capital.
- •From U.S. airline deregulation in 1978 through the end of 2025, the article says the industry’s cumulative net profit was negative $37 billion.
- •The article argues that repeated bankruptcies are common in aviation, citing failures or restructurings involving Pan Am, Eastern Air Lines, TWA, Braniff, Alitalia, and multiple major U.S. carriers.