Yeah, they were all yellow … and for a long time, those yellow planes often meant the difference between going and staying home.
$100 round trip to Orlando on a whim and some of the best memories during my kids’ magic years. $31 on a cold January morning to fly to Las Vegas and sell my business. $19 to fly to Kansas City and see a Chiefs game with family. 2,500 miles for my retired parents to fly out west and go skiing, hiking, or simply take in the mountains.
In the pre-pandemic days — when shutdowns and TSA backups were less common — it was easy to say yes to a trip, not overthink it, pack a bag and go. Spirit wasn’t just the quirky cheapest option with its “bare fare” era and mostly-naked ads. It wasn’t only the airline where you wore your bulkiest clothes onboard to avoid bag fees, where the planes looked like highlighters, where there might be ads on the overhead bins, and where there were certainly fees for everything from printed boarding passes to the right to carry a bag onboard.
It was also so much more. It changed the game in the U.S. for people who otherwise couldn’t afford to fly. Think of the moms, dads, grandparents, kids, aunts and cousins who, because of those $29 and $49 fares, took trips that otherwise would have been out of reach. That’s not hypothetical — that’s my story.
For many years I lived on a modest social worker’s salary. Spirit meant something simple: the freedom to go. For $30 or so, you could toss your stuff in a backpack and be airborne. Sure, gates sometimes felt more like a bus terminal than an airport lounge. Seats were tight. The vibe was closer to a DMV line than United’s 1K boarding group. But so what? We all stand in line at the DMV. And sometimes we want to escape our regularly scheduled lives. The view from 36,000 feet inside that yellow fuselage was just as good as from any other plane.
Countless trips trace back to Spirit, but one sticks out: 2018, kids aged three and nine. After a perfect Disney World trip that summer, I wanted to see the magic again with Christmas lights everywhere. The only way to make it work was a $100 round-trip flight that left very early. I booked on a whim and didn’t tell the kids until we woke them that morning. Their 5 a.m. confusion, the bed hair, and then the absolute joy when it clicked — “We’re going to Disney World… right now” — that memory is everything. I don’t remember the flight details. I remember the trip it made possible.
Spirit wasn’t perfect, but it was safe and honest about what it was. Over three decades, it made travel more affordable while quietly reshaping airline pricing. Even if you never flew Spirit, there’s a good chance you benefited from its scrappy presence pushing fares down.
So tonight, the stars will shine for you, Spirit — even if, for the first time in 34 years, your planes are watching them from the ground. I won’t be laughing at “RIP Spirit” memes. I’ll be mourning, and feeling deeply grateful for what that yellow airline made possible in my life.
