Could the defunct Spirit Airlines get crowdfunded? A website set up to collect pledges toward buying the bankrupt Florida-based carrier and running it as a cooperative operation crashed multiple times over the weekend under a flood of interest.
As of Monday morning, May 4, “Spirit 2.0” at letsbuyspirit.com had received pledges of more than $88 million from about 125,000 patrons before the site crashed. Pledges are temporarily disabled, the site said, as the servers were overloaded and email providers had blacklisted the site as spam. According to the site, the minimum pledge request was $45, “the average price of a one-way Spirit ticket.” The average pledge received was $667.
Hunter Peterson, a video game voice actor who went viral for his video about flying Spirit Airlines for 24 hours in a row, launched the site after floating the idea of buying Spirit in a TikTok video. “I had a genius idea,” he said.
Peterson’s target goal is $1.75 billion.
“There’s more than two hundred and fifty million individuals over the age of eighteen in the United States,” he said. “Now, if we took only twenty percent of them and paid basically the average fare of a Spirit Airlines flight, which is somewhere around $30 to $40, we could buy Spirit Airlines.”
Peterson’s bio on the @spiritair2.0 Instagram account where he posts updates reads, “Get in losers, we’re buying spirit. Voice Actor, Future Airline CEO.”
‘I want to be CEO of Spirit’
In a Monday morning Instagram post, the actor and former Mr. Beast employee said he’d dreamed of running an airline since he was 7 years old.
“I don’t know why,” he said, discussing the high rate of airline bankruptcies. “But I still wanted it because I loved it. I loved the idea of having something that could help connect people everywhere, no matter where they are, they could get on a plane, and a couple of hours later they could be with their family, their friends, they could see something new, they could do something new.
“That’s what aviation is all about.”
“F— you, Elon Musk, he added. “You’re not buying this airline, we are.” Rumors spread over the weekend that the tech giant was considering buying the bankrupt airline.
Peterson clarified in a different post that he didn’t want to own the airline; he was hoping to get people with airline experience to do that. “I really wanna run this on behalf of the people. I don’t wanna own this,” he said.
How much would it cost to buy Spirit?
Spirit was negotiating with the U.S. government for a $500 million bailout to keep going, in exchange for a 90% stake in the company. In February, a Louisiana-based investment group that was considering capitalizing the airline said it would take about $1 billion of new equity to keep it in the air.
There are multiple other steps required to take over and maintain an airline, including getting a Federal Aviation Administration Air Operator’s Certificate, a time-consuming and expensive process. Transferring Spirit’s existing certificate would require both regulatory approval and the consent of Spirit’s creditors, which already scuttled the Trump administration’s offer last week.
Is Spirit 2.0 taking money to buy the airline?
No. Although he joked in his video about making a Venmo, Peterson said he was only collecting nonbinding pledges and not accepting any money.
Anyone making a pledge would get one vote in the new airline, he said in a Sunday video, regardless of how much they contributed. Dividends would be paid proportionally to a person’s pledge. While he distrusted outside investors, he admitted the project would need them.
The site lists other companies that work under co-op models, such as REI, Ocean Spray, Land O’Lakes, and the Green Bay Packers.
C. A. Bridges is a journalist for the USA TODAY Network-Florida’s service journalism Connect team. You can get all of Florida’s best content directly in your inbox each weekday day by signing up for the free newsletter, Florida TODAY.
This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: Spirit Airlines crowdfunding site gets $88 million in pledges
Reporting by C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY NETWORK – Florida / Palm Beach Post
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
