We know that Spirit Airlines is in a really tough spot financially, as the company is in Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the second time in a year, and the carrier is really hanging on by a thread. In addition to whatever financial issues the airline has, it’s also having serious problems with operating reliably, and things have gotten worse with the new year. What’s going on here, exactly?
Spirit Airlines keeps canceling & delaying flights
If you look at FlightAware’s flight delay cancelation and delay dashboard, you’ll notice that only one airline in the United States really seems to be struggling with operational reliability so far in 2026. Specifically, Spirit has been canceling and delaying a concerning number of flights:
- On Thursday, January 1, 2025, Spirit canceled 11% of flights and delayed 38% of flights
- On Friday, January 2, 2025, Spirit canceled 14% of flights and delayed 33% of flights
- On Saturday, January 3, 2025 (today, as of 6:30AM ET), Spirit canceled 9% of flights and delayed 3% of flights
Saturday is just getting started, so I suspect this will get significantly worse as the day goes on. While I wouldn’t quite call this a crisis or a meltdown, it’s still a pattern of serious issues with operational reliability. The airline also hasn’t actually provided an explanation for why the schedule has struggled so much.
Spirit Airlines seems to be short staffed, or something
With Spirit’s lack of communication about the operational issues, all we can do is speculate. The airline also isn’t great about loading notes with delays, to provide explanations as to the causes.
It’s my understanding that these delays and cancelations come down to staffing shortages. That’s corroborated by some Airline Pilot Central Forums posts that JonNYC flags, claiming that flight attendants are “calling in sick and walking off flights.”
I’m not sure about the “walking off flights” part, but one thing is for sure — the airline is losing employees at a very fast pace. For example, the airline was supposed to furlough around 10% of pilots in early 2026, but canceled those furloughs, because so many pilots are leaving voluntarily. We’re also seeing a lot of people sick right now, particularly with the flu, which isn’t too surprising after the holidays.
So despite Spirit shrinking, it seems that the airline has gone from overstaffed to understaffed very quickly. It also seems that maybe many employees just aren’t that invested in making the company run anymore. I mean, can you blame them, when they’ve just taken pay cuts, and there are rumors every day that a liquidation is imminent?
So we’ll mark this as “developing,” but seeing around 50% of flights each day either delayed or canceled, and seeing a cancelation rate of over 10%, is not so great.
Bottom line
Spirit Airlines is struggling to operate even its greatly scaled back network reliably, as the airline has seen delays or cancelations for nearly 50% of its flights on the first two days of 2026 (with 11-14% of total flights canceled).
It’s my understanding that this primarily comes down to flight attendants calling in sick, as it seems the airline has gone from being overstaffed to understaffed very quickly. Given all of Spirit’s other issues, this is hardly what the company needs right now, but I also can’t say I’m surprised.
What do you make of Spirit’s issues with operating reliably?
