photo #9176454

"I've warned for months that a JetBlue-Spirit Airlines merger would have led to fewer flights and higher fares. This is a Biden win for flyers!" said Senator Elizabeth Warren, Democrat of Massachusetts, January 2024Well Senator, the receipts have arrived.Spirit Airlines is dead.After 34 years of putting working families on planes they could actually afford, the yellow jets are grounded for good. The wind down began in the early hours of May 2, 2026.Seventeen thousand workers lost their jobs overnight.Thousands of travelers were stranded mid trip. Millions more holding tickets are scrambling to rebook on carriers whose fares are about to climb, because guess what happens when you remove the most aggressive low cost competitor in the market.Less competition. Higher prices.The exact outcome Warren swore she was preventing.Here is what actually happened. Spirit's own CEO testified under oath that the airline had been trying to sell itself since 2016. JetBlue offered $3.8 billion in a merger that would have built a fifth competitor capable of pressuring the Big Four legacy carriers.Biden's DOJ sued to kill it. Pete Buttigieg cheered. Warren co-signed letters with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and seven other House Democrats demanding the deal be blocked. The court ruled against the merger in January 2024. Warren popped the champagne and called it a "Biden win."Then Spirit filed bankruptcy. Twice.Now Warren is on X blaming "spiking fuel prices from Trump's war" for the collapse. Sorry Senator, no amount of finger pointing at jet fuel rewrites the timeline. You strangled the lifeline two years before a single Iranian missile flew.Hamilton wrote in Federalist 11 that a thriving commerce is the engine of a free republic. Warren and her allies treated a struggling discount airline like a Gilded Age monopoly, and the working families she claims to fight for now pay the price every time they walk up to a gate.