When Spirit Airlines shut down overnight Saturday, canceling all flights, laying off 17,000 employees and telling ticket holders to simply don’t come to the airport – people were stunned but also heartbroken. For all its indignities, Spirit was cheap. Then one of them had an idea.
Hunter Peterson, a voice actor with frequent flyer complaints, posted a TikTok asking: what would happen if 20% of American adults contributed to the price of a Spirit fare and only…? . . did I buy it? He called it “Spirit 2.0: property of the people.” Within hours he had created a website (a shoddy hour’s work, by his own admission) and by Sunday, 36,000 “founding backers” had pledged nearly $23 million, crashing his servers in the process.
None of that is real money. These are non-binding commitments. It is also worth noting that the true cost of acquiring and relaunching an airline runs into the billions. Peterson knows it. In a video posted today, he attempted to recruit aviation lawyers, public relations people and attorneys with a one-word question: “Help?”
“I know what I don’t know,” he told his followers, but “you’re committing to this part, so I’m committing to this part.”
