Change fees quietly return on base fares of this airline effective as of Wednesday, February 5, 2025, which also includes fees to cancel flights as well — and that is not the only bad news.
Change Fees Quietly Return On Base Fares of This Airline — Plus…
The airline is Spirit Airlines, which announced the elimination of change fees and cancellation fees on all fares back in May of 2024. Passengers who purchase a Go fare after Wednesday, February 5, 2025:
- Will be required to pay a fee of between $59.00 and $99.00 — depending on the cost of the base fare — to change or cancel a flight
- Are not permitted to carry bags aboard the airplane — not even for a fee
- Can only upgrade to Go Comfy fares or Go Big fares — upgrading to Go Savvy fares is no longer available
The good news is that if you change or cancel your Go fare flight a minimum of 60 days in advance, a fee will not be incurred.
Significant financial issues forced the airline to declare bankruptcy protection on Monday, November 18, 2024. Frontier Airlines attempted to acquire Spirit Airlines on more than one occasion since then to take advantage of what was considered to be an opportunity; but their attempts were rejected each time, as the management and shareholders of Spirit Airlines decided to proceed on their own to emerge from bankruptcy with standalone recapitalization on Tuesday, February 11, 2025.
Spirit Airlines, Incorporated officially announced that its Plan of Reorganization was confirmed by the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York — meaning that with this approval in place, Spirit Airlines expects to emerge from chapter 11 bankruptcy in the coming weeks.
“Under the approved Plan, Spirit will equitize $795 million of funded debt, receive $350 million of new equity investment and issue $840 million aggregate principal amount of new senior secured debt to existing bondholders upon emergence”, according to this official press release from Thursday, February 20, 2025. “In addition, Spirit will enter into a new revolving credit facility of up to $300 million. Spirit vendors, aircraft lessors and holders of secured aircraft indebtedness will not be impaired.”
Shares of SAVEQ — which is the official stock of Spirit Airlines stock and ended three cents higher per share at 47 cents per share earlier today, Tuesday, February 25, 2025 — will eventually become completely worthless because Spirit Airlines will no longer be a publicly traded company once it emerges from capture 11 bankruptcy.
Final Boarding Call
Operations of flights should remain unchanged throughout the remainder of the process of emergence from bankruptcy; but do not be surprised if Spirit Airlines quietly continues to introduce and implement other fees in attempts to improve its revenue…
…and if you are a shareholder of Spirit Airlines, you are generally out of luck.
All photographs ©2024 by Brian Cohen.
