You've probably heard of how Spirit's been shut down by now. They went down in a pretty anticlimactic poof of smoke. No ring of fire, no wild exit, all they really got was an official announcement and a load of stranded passengers.
But although they've been pretty badly mocked their entire existence, there's a pretty sizable cult following of Spirit fans out there. After all, it was a budget airline, so their prices had to win some people over, right? And it's to the point that they're looking to have Spirit rise from the ashes... this time as a publicly owned airliner.
As reported by The New York Sun, it's a pretty genuine grassroots campaign. Hunter Peterson is the man behind the movement. He's a voice actor and a social media influencer who previously flew Spirit for 24 hours straight and documented his experience in a YouTube video. So who better than him to lead the charge?
"Okay, I had a genius idea," he explained in a video online. "There's more than 250 million individuals over the age of 18 in the United States. Now, if we took only 20% of them, and [they] paid basically the average fare of a Spirit Airlines flight, which is somewhere around $30 to $40, we could buy Spirit Airlines! We nationalise Spirit Airlines, owned by the people."
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So, He Set Up a Website To Buy Out Spirit
His natural next step was to set up a bold yet powerful website: letsbuyspirit.com. The website features a bold title card, "SPIRIT 2.0. OWNED BY US." Pretty good, right?
The website claims that a nationalized Spirit would be based on an egalitarian model. This includes an Employee Stock Ownership Plan, giving workers equity in the company. They also want to go democratic on the company's business, giving each person one equal vote on corporate matters.
And it's working. The website was recently updated to reflect that people flooded the servers so hard that they had to stop taking money. So far, they've raised $22,816,377, with an average pledge of $623.
This is an absolutely wild initiative. We hope that things work out and that Spirit can return like a phoenix from the ashes!
