Spirit Airlines is out of business. Most people that bought tickets are getting refunds. Spirit is processing refunds for anyone who purchased directly through them.
But it’s really rough on the employees. It’s rough on the creditors, but they’ll survive. It’s rough on content creators. They had some wild flights!
You know who it’s really rough on? Passengers whose bags Spirit Airlines lost. Maybe they even found the bag but you can’t get the bag. It’s locked away in an office, and the employees don’t work there anymore!
Unclaimed bags in the Spirit Office
by
u/Mysterious-Oil-9874 in
spiritair
This photo shows a locked former Spirit baggage service office at the BWI airport. Lost luggage doesn’t become Spirit’s property just because it’s locked inside a Spirit office. The bags inside belong to passengers – they just cannot get access to them.
The airport and remaining wind-down staff are going to need to inventory the office. Bags with Spirit bag tags should be traceable through NetTracer. If there’s no baggage record, then that’s lost and found and hopefully gets turned over to the airport.
The airline is responsible for locating the checked bags. For truly lost bags, you’ve got a claim against the airline – but you’re an unsecured creditor in bankruptcy. Good luck with the bankruptcy claims agent. The credit card you used to buy the ticket may have lost luggage coverage.
There is a point, though, where a passenger would have a genuinely lost bag, files a claim with the bankruptcy estate – gets nothing – and the airline separately has the bag but doesn’t connect it with the owner, and sells it.. probably through Unclaimed Baggage in Alabama.
What’s telling here is that Spirit’s ground operations imploded so completely that they didn’t even have a basic asset recovery protocol in place. Any properly managed shutdown would have had third-party contractors specifically tasked with bag inventory and return procedures. The fact that bags are literally locked away with no access tells you how chaotic the final days were.
The NetTracer reference is technically correct but practically useless – Spirit’s system access is likely frozen or compromised, and even if it weren’t, there’s no staff left to process claims. The real story here is that airports are being left to clean up this mess without proper compensation or guidance from the bankruptcy trustee.
What’s not mentioned in this article is that DOT regulations on baggage responsibility don’t simply disappear in bankruptcy. The estate remains liable, but passengers are now at the bottom of a very long creditor list. The credit card chargeback angle is smart, but many issuers will reject claims if the service was technically rendered (the flight operated before shutdown).
“And… it’s gone.”
I wondered about this, and assumed that in its last chaotic days, more bags than usual got lost. Obviously a terrible situation for the unlucky passengers, but my guess is that between the Spirit estate (which seems to be behaving reasonably) and the local airport authorities, almost all these passengers will get their bags back within a couple weeks. We will see.
Why can’t they simply be turned over to the airport’s Lost and Found office? Essentially those items are lost.
Ethically, I’d see nothing wrong with just forcing the door at this point. But legally is another matter.
If it’s in the baggage office at an airport and you can prove it, I’m wondering whether airport security might not be willing to retrieve it? Or might there be recourse to go to a magistrate to get an order?
“The credit card you used to buy the ticket may have lost luggage coverage.“ And yet, if you used a debit card (or cash, yeesh), as some of NK’s clientele may have… that’s some real bad luck.
@Denver Refugee — “This line is for people who have money with the bank only… please step aside.”
I don’t think Spirit even subscribed to NetRacer, BMAS, or Worldtracer. it is NOT cheap. I seem to have thought Navitaire had some built-in functionality for baggage management.
Ceasing operations is ceasing operations. I’m sure in the grand scheme of things getting lost bags to their destination is not high on the priority list during a shut down.
And I’m sure I’d feel differently if it were my bags. But it wouldn’t be because I never check a bag. Ever. Period.
People knew that this was possible. They were keeping their fingers crossed and hoping for the best which is to say that many didn’t plan for it even when it was only days away. I hope that they get their bags back but they will probably end up being sold as a lot.
@Mike Hunt let’s consider what a “properly managed” shutdown entails – the bankrupt airlines would be asking its creditor who’ve already lost billions to take on further loss of millions to pay staff in order to service former customers who are now just creditors lower on the pecking order.
Nah – that’s why a proper shutdown almost never happens. Short of more government regulations, the chaotic shutdown we see all the time is the nature order of thing.
If they just went around the corner like 50 feet to the airport police station or up to the airport authority office one level up, both of those places have keys…..
What NedsKid said, thread the needle with a valid Id and appeal to common-decent-sense with onsite Airport personnel. Like, come on…
@Gary X — Ooh… “more government regulations” to prevent “chaotic” situations? Huh… tell me more!