Spirit Airlines: How the Model That Made It Work Became the Condition It Couldn't Survive

Spirit Airlines was the most profitable airline in America in 2014. It ceased operations on May 2, 2026. The coverage blamed a war, a fuel spike, and a blocked merger. The structural story starts a decade earlier.In this episode, Dawn Porthouse examines how Spirit's ultra-low-cost model depended on a price gap wide enough that passengers would accept every tradeoff — and how that gap closed, slowly and deliberately, long before the final crisis arrived.Deliberate Drift analyzes how companies change structurally over time. Not through sudden failure, but through slow drift — decisions that appeared rational while constraints accumulated beneath the surface.Full analysis at deliberatedrift.com