Former silver status Spirit Airlines customer Brendan Sichak of Fenton lost the 60,000 plus points he accumulated over several years of flying when the airline abruptly closed earlier this month.
Now, he’s looking for a new airline to build loyalty with, but only if the price is right.
“I looked at the benefits I had … I had two free checked bags on every flight up to 50 pounds. I had a free exit row upgrade with my Spirit Silver. … I had a couple good benefits with them that I would have a hard time getting right off the bat with a different airline,” Sichak, 26, said. “I was pretty much spending everything that I had on that credit card to try to accumulate points.”
Budget-friendly Spirit, which was ranked No. 2 by Business Insider as one of the safest airlines, will be missed by many flyers and aviation industry personnel.
“I moved from metropolitan Detroit to Myrtle Beach back in November/December 2021. I still had business to take care of in Detroit so I was flying back and forth, so Spirit was extremely convenient, not only was it inexpensive but it was a direct flight,” said John Boch, 60. “Without that kind of transportation, I would not have been able to do the things I did at the cost that I was able to do them.”
The frequent Spirit flyer with a background in consulting in the restaurant industry plans to come to Detroit in July for his son’s birthday and Independence Day but, now, Boch said, “it’s a matter of what the travel arrangements are going to be to get up there.”
The closure of the carrier known for its yellow planes leaves hundreds of gates available for operating airlines at Detroit Metro and other airports to pick up, but which ones will?
“The only way … of coming close to those type of prices are some of the JetBlues, more of the Frontier … who are still in business,” said David Fishman, owner of Cadillac Travel Group. “For the consumer, it’s waiting for opportunities to see who’s going to be in the market that’s going to give them those rates. Some people are going to have to drive to Flint (Bishop International Airport) to get a good deal.”
Frontier Airlines officials said it will likely put a bid in on Spirit’s aircraft and assets and is plans to pounce on budget-conscious customers left behind by Spirit.
Prior to Spirit’s departure, Frontier Airlines ranked fifth overall in passenger traffic at Detroit Metro Airport, behind Delta Air Lines’ mainline operation and connection carriers, Spirit Airlines and American Airlines, according to annual airport passenger data.
Last year, 4.5 million passengers were serviced at DTW’s Evans Terminal, of which Spirit Airline took a share of 1.7 million passengers, according to the 2025 Aviation Statistics Report from Detroit Metro Airport. Delta Air Lines, by comparison, served 9.2 million flyers out of the McNamara Terminal.
Frontier’s 134,887 passengers in 2025 significantly outpaced the other remaining budget-focused competitors at Detroit Metro, including Southwest Airlines with 116,138 flyers, JetBlue Airways with 16,643 passengers and Avelo Airlines with 2,491 flyers.
Flyers should be flexible and plan to travel during the week or based on seasonal demand, like traveling to Europe and South America during its winter time to see more affordable pricing, Fishman said.
“That’s the other problem with the fact that we are a Delta hub. Being a Delta hub, if you want to fly nonstop to probably 70 to 100 places, you can’t, unless you’re flying Delta, so that situation will be hard,” Fishman said, adding that having fewer flight options at Detroit Metro makes it easy for airlines to charge higher fares.
‘A detriment’
The last Spirit Airlines flight Sichak would ever take landed around midnight May 2 at Detroit Metro from Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
Since then, he’s taken eight one-way flights with discount-fare airlines including Breeze Airways, which he said had comfortable seats but carried a price jump of $50 to $70 over Spirit.
“The way that the prices are right now none of them seem to be anything comparable to what Spirit was, especially since I had their credit card and was a loyal member for five years,” he said.
A similar sentiment was expressed by former southeast Michiganian Boch, who said he recently searched for a nonstop round-trip Delta flight to Detroit and found it was $1,500 to fly in Monday and leave Thursday. He never paid more than $200 for a Spirit round-trip flight to Detroit.
“I look at a company like Spirit that offered a huge convenience to travelers … from a personal standpoint, that option being taken away is a bad situation for me,” he said. “All of my family, my kids still live in Michigan, so I go back quite often just to visit and to not have that option is obviously a detriment.
“Is there going to be a replacement for Spirit? Is it going to be where a Delta or another airline steps up and takes these routes Spirit was flying? Probably not for the same economical fare,” he said.
JetBlue announced an expansion of flights from Fort Lauderdale on May 4, picking up routes that Spirit Airlines left behind. It also said it would match loyalty programs for Spirit Silver and Gold members with JetBlue’s TrueBlue Mosaic program.
“We know many Spirit customers are feeling the loss of the loyalty they built over time,” said Marty St. George, JetBlue’s president, in a release. “Our status match is designed to recognize that commitment and give them a seamless path forward with JetBlue —particularly in Fort Lauderdale, where we’re expanding service and offering more ways to travel with us.”
Now, JetBlue is performing the largest Florida operation in its history with 75% more flights this year than in 2025 as the largest airline in FLL with nearly 130 daily departures, according to its release.
Six new cities now have JetBlue flights: Barranquilla, Colombia; Baltimore; Cali, Colombia; Charlotte; Columbus, and Indianapolis. Nonstop flights are now offered from Fort Lauderdale to Nashville, Detroit, Houston, Chicago and Ponce, Puerto Rico.
Carissa Star-Sindoni, a JetBlue flight attendant based at John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York, saw former Spirit customers take rescue flights on Jet Blue and other airlines since the airline’s abrupt closure on May 2.
Commuter flight attendants also used the airline to get home, Star-Sindoni, 41, said.
“People think ‘Oh it’s just an airline closure.’ It’s not. It effects everybody and every airline not just Spirit,” Star-Sindoni said. Now, on-reserve flight attendants like herself are working overtime to keep up with new flights.
“It definitely hurts a lot of people. It doesn’t just hurt revenue customers. It hurts the industry as a whole,” she said. “Spirit had a great product. A lot of people need to fly somewhere quickly and go somewhere fast for a business meeting, overnight somewhere, visit someone in the hospital. They were getting there affordably … not every airline has that.
“People plan their vacations way ahead of time, sometimes years in advance. It’s definitely going to affect the industry for a while. It’s not going to be cleaned up overnight,” she said.
Hearing news of a potential closure, Sichak, a full-time content creator, filmed his last flight on the yellow bird and asked flight attendants if they were worried about what might happen.
“They were like ‘We don’t really know for sure. We’re just hoping for the best,'” Sichak said.
“I feel for all those people. 17,000 people being out of work is no strange thing, that’s a large amount of people. I was just thinking that it sucks that all these people we’re expecting to go to work one day and then the next day they’re not going to be able to work anymore,” he said.
mjohnson@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Spirit Airlines is gone. What’s next for budget travelers?
Reporting by Myesha Johnson, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
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