TALLAHASSEE --- As Spirit Airlines ceases operations, resulting in 4,853 employees in Florida being laid off by next Wednesday, politicians are debating who is to blame for the Dania Beach-based carrier’s demise.
U.S. Sen. Ashley Moody, R-Tampa, joined Trump administration officials in pointing at former President Joe Biden, as the Justice Department under his administration blocked JetBlue from buying Spirit in 2023 for $3.8 billion.
(Editor's note: U.S. District Judge William G. Young formally blocked the $3.8 billion JetBlue-Spirit merger in January 2024, ruling it violated antitrust laws. The lawsuit to stop the merger was brought by the Biden Administration’s Department of Justice (DOJ), led by Attorney General Merrick Garland and Assistant Attorney General Jonathan Kanter.)
“We do things differently here in Florida. We don’t make guttural political decisions,” Moody said. “We look at the consequences and the long-term effects on our citizens. That should have been done by the Biden administration. It wasn’t, and this played out exactly how we expected it to.”
“In Florida, we saw this coming. We tried to work with Spirit. It was having financial problems, and it wanted to merge with another low-cost carrier to continue to provide flights to Floridians," Moody continued. "After we saw another airline go out of business here in Florida, in order to protect competition and prices, this was very important.”
Meanwhile, Alex Vindman, who is running to be the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate to take on Moody in November, acknowledged the 2023 Justice Department action, but also pointed toward Republicans who now run the federal government.
“The Biden Administration had the opportunity to prevent this from happening, but blocked the merger between JetBlue and Spirit,” Vindman said in a statement. “And the situation was exacerbated by our current leaders in Washington like Ashley Moody supporting a war of choice against Iran that has made fuel prices skyrocket, making it untenable for companies like Spirit to operate and everyday Floridians to live their everyday lives.”
Suzanne Solon, Spirit vice president of human resources, told the state the company couldn’t give more advanced notice of its closure as it could have impacted efforts to secure capital needed to avoid the layoffs.
“We are notifying you of the decision to cease operations and terminate most of our valued workforce as soon as it was practicable to do so, after having heard the final positions of the (debtor in possession) lenders and the United States Government,” Solon wrote employees on Saturday.
The letter was included in the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification sent to the state Department of Commerce, which the state posted Monday.
“The need to cease operations and abandon our efforts to reorganize was a result of the recent dramatic and sustained deterioration in business conditions --- primarily the material and sustained run up in fuel prices --- resulting from geopolitical events of the last few weeks,” Solon continued.
The notification to the state showed the biggest effects were in South Florida, where 2,529 are being laid off at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport. Another 181 have been or will be let go at Miami International Airport and 551 are losing jobs at the Spirit Support Center in Dania Beach.
The company also released 796 workers at Orlando International Airport and another 796 at the MCO Infight & Operations Center, which supports the operations at airport
In the letter to employees, Solon also warned that the massive spike in fuel prices “will cost U.S. airlines billions of dollars this year.”
