[00:02] after 34 years and this TikTok voice actor is trying to crowdfund 1.75 billion dollars to buy it back, but will it work? Hours after Spirit grounded every flight on May 2nd, he posted a TikTok pitching that if 20% of US adults
[00:15] each kicked in the price of a Spirit ticket, which is around $45, that we the people could buy the airline outright. The Green Bay Packers are owned by a community, but an airline is a little bit different because first, the
[00:27] estimated cost to actually acquire and restart Spirit Airlines is 1.75 billion dollars. So, even at 214 million dollars in pledges after about 6 days, they're not even at 15% of that goal. Pledges aren't real money, either. There's
[00:41] pledging, let's say, $100,000, but aren't actually going to come up with the money. Second, the FAA operating certificate that Spirit had is non-transferable, so Spirit 2.0 would have to apply from scratch and that
[00:53] could take over a year. And on top of that, the Department of Transportation requires you to prove that you can cover all operating expenses for 90 days with zero revenue. That's an additional 753 million dollars, and so you would need
[01:07] community-owned airlines have been tried before. Kiwi International tried it in 1992 and it was dead by 1999. I'd like to think it's possible and I'm not going to rule out anything, but there are a lot of factors stacked against it.