By Kashmira Konduparty
On May 2, Spirit Airlines ceased operations due to the high jet fuel costs following the Iran War, that led the company to bankruptcy. The airline company abruptly canceled all of the flights and stopped operations, leaving the passengers shaken.
Hunter Peterson, a voice artist, who is one of their frequent fliers posted a video on TikTok and Instagram with a very unorthodox plan to buy Spirit Airlines.
READ: Spirit Airlines shuts down operations immediately, all flights cancelled (May 2, 2026)
In the video, he asked people that what if “we took 20% of the people over the age of 18 in USA, and paid the average of a Spirit Airlines flight… we could buy Spirit Airlines,” calling the campaign “Spirit 2.0: Owned by the people.”
Peterson then launched a website and by the next day, he received 36,000 “founding patrons” who had pledged nearly $23 million, crashing his website in the process. These responses are not real money; they are non-binding pledges of people who want to make Spirit Airlines a community-owned airline.
The website called, letsbuyspiritair.com, was launched on Monday to track how many people were interested in the purchase and received massive responses from 124,755 patrons, pledging over $88 million. And this overwhelming response crashed the website not once but twice, prompting Peterson and his team to work on bringing it back. At the time of this article, the website claims to be functional within “24-48 hours.”
He posted a video on his Instagram, sharing that while the idea started off as a joke, it turned into something he was very passionate about. “I still wanted it because I loved it, I loved the idea of having something that could help connect people everywhere,” Peterson said via Instagram.
This is not Peterson’s first stint with Spirit Airlines — in 2025, he made a video on flying Spirit Airlines for 24 hours straight.
READ: Spirit Airlines crowdfunding bid gains millions in pledges (May 3, 2026)
The shutdown of Spirit Airlines follows months of attempts to salvage the airline’s finances. Spirit pointed to “extensive and comprehensive efforts to restructure the business and pursue transactions to strengthen Spirit’s financial position and create a sustainable path forward.” But those efforts ultimately fell short in the face of mounting pressures.
At the center of the collapse is a sharp spike in fuel costs. The airline acknowledged that “the recent material increase in oil prices and other pressures on the business have significantly impacted Spirit’s financial outlook.” With funding options exhausted, it added that “with no additional funding available to the Company, Spirit had no choice but to begin this wind-down.”