At three in the morning Saturday, May 2, the ever-contracting, ever-enervating airline industry lost one of its most mocked, yet oddly reliable players: Spirit Airlines. The budget company known for its bright yellow planes, cheap tickets, and stripped-down services was officially grounded after years of financial difficulties, including two bankruptcies in 2024 and 2025.
Spirit’s demise raises plenty of questions and concerns for an industry dominated by an increasingly small number of major players. And it comes at a moment when the war in Iran is causing fuel prices to spike, making already pricey plane tickets even more expensive.
But, let’s be real: You’re not here for deep dives into the ongoing financial and supply chain ramifications of global conflict, the sudden loss of approximately 17,000 part-time and full-time jobs, waves of travel disruptions, decades of airline industry deregulation, or the minutia of antitrust law and enforcement. You’re here to distract yourself from all that with memes — and brother, the memes have been bountiful!
There’s probably no better place to start than the numerous photoshop jobs that showed Spirit planes taken over by the ultimate symbol of retail demise: Signage for Spirit Halloween.
Similarly, numerous people joked about picking up out-of-service jets at bargain prices. “Just bought this bad boy on Temu,” one X user joked alongside a photo of a Spirit plane parked in a driveway.
Someone even cooked up a whole fake Facebook Marketplace ad for a 2017 Spirit Airlines Airbus A320, asking price $22,500. Among the listed “pros”: “Bright yellow so you’ll never lose it in a parking lot” and “overhead storage for days.” Cons, however, included “slightly wider than a standard garage” and “may require a runway.”
“Runs and drives great,” the listing added. “Cold A/C. No lowballers, I know what I have.”
Elsewhere, a content creator who goes by @6blessed__ and also appears to be an actual employee at the airport in Dallas-Fort Worth, shared a tribute video featuring him and his co-workers. The clip included footage of the employees poignantly waving goodbye to a Spirit jet from the tarmac, with one even dropping to his knees to hug the plane. All of it was, of course, set to the somber sounds of Wiz Khalifa and Charlie Puth’s “See You Again.”
And the content creator Jenna Lu recorded a video dubbed “Me at the funeral for Spirit Airlines,” which she shot as if she was speaking to the airline at an open-casket funeral. In the clip, Lu jokingly recalled being asked to pay $60 to check a backpack that just barely exceeded Spirit’s extremely exacting carry-on dimensions.
“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it? Because, like, your name is Spirit and now you are a Spirit,” Lu joked. “Gone, but unfortunately, not easily forgotten!”
Some of the funniest videos, however, came from an account called @not_spiritairlines — a self-described “fan page” that was actually a real marketing ploy from Spirit, launched in the final months of its existence. (Seriously, the account went live in March. Rachel Karten, who writes a Substack on the social media landscape, interviewed the agency behind the account, Cousin Labs, last month.)
One of the final posts from @not_spiritairlines featured fake employees honoring the last Spirit flight by performing Hamilton songs in the aisles. Another found a pilot holding out an iPad as passengers deplaned trying to squeeze out a few last pennies by asking for tips.
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