Spirit Airlines, Inc. (SAVE)

Spirit Airlines was the largest ultra-low-cost carrier in the United States for much of the 2010s. Based in South Florida, it flew a fleet made up entirely of Airbus A320-family jets on domestic routes and to the Caribbean and Latin America. Its model separated the base fare from nearly every extra, including carry-on bags, seat assignments and printed boarding passes, which let it advertise very low prices while earning a large share of revenue from optional fees.

The company went public in 2011 and its common stock traded on NASDAQ under the ticker SAVE. At the end of December 2017 it moved the listing to the New York Stock Exchange, keeping the same symbol. Through the late 2010s Spirit grew quickly, adding aircraft and cities, and it was regularly among the most profitable airlines in the country by margin before the pandemic sharply reduced air travel in 2020.

Spirit then became the subject of a bidding contest. A planned combination with Frontier Airlines was dropped in 2022 after shareholders backed a higher cash offer from JetBlue Airways. The Justice Department sued to block the JetBlue deal, and in January 2024 a federal judge ruled against the merger, which was terminated a few weeks later. Without a merger partner, Spirit faced engine problems that grounded part of its fleet, rising costs and heavy debt maturities.

On November 18, 2024, Spirit filed for Chapter 11 protection, and the NYSE suspended trading in its stock that day and began delisting it. The shares moved to the over-the-counter market as SAVEQ. When the company emerged from bankruptcy on March 12, 2025, the old common stock was canceled with no recovery for holders, and the business was reorganized under a new parent, Spirit Aviation Holdings, owned largely by former creditors.

The new parent's shares began trading on NYSE American under the ticker FLYY on April 29, 2025, but the recovery did not hold. Spirit filed a second Chapter 11 case on August 29, 2025, and the exchange suspended FLYY on September 2, 2025, after which it traded over the counter as FLYYQ. Efforts to find a rescue failed, and the airline canceled all flights and ceased operations on May 2, 2026.

A bankruptcy judge approved a wind-down plan days later, under which Spirit's aircraft, engines, airport gates, landing slots and other assets are being sold for the benefit of creditors. About 17,000 employees lost their jobs. Neither the original SAVE shares nor the later FLYY shares trade on a US exchange today, and no successor company carries the Spirit business forward as a listed stock.