Here’s why the Trump administration is blaming Biden for Spirit Airlines collapsing on its watch

Trump officials have blamed former President Joe Biden’s administration for Spirit Airlines' collapse on its watch.

Spirit Airlines announced Saturday that it was winding down operations with all flights canceled after failing to emerge from bankruptcy. It came after the airline failed to secure a $500 million bailout from the Trump administration.

While there are several factors that led to the budget carrier’s demise, officials from the Trump administration have honed in on one — the failed 2022 Spirit-JetBlue merger.

JetBlue would have acquired Spirit Airlines for $3.8 billion in 2024 if Biden’s Department of Justice hadn’t stepped in and blocked the merger over antitrust concerns.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Fox News on Monday that his predecessor, Pete Buttigieg, and Biden said at the time, “‘We want competition. We’re not going to allow this merger to happen.’ And because of that, right after, Spirit filed for bankruptcy.”

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“They were bleeding money. They were bleeding market share,” Duffy said, adding that the merger “would have made JetBlue stronger. You would have had one stronger airline as opposed to one airline going out of business. And so the story was written years ago.”

When JetBlue announced in 2024 that it had abandoned the merger, the Biden administration celebrated it as a victory for American consumers.

“The Justice Department proved in court that a merger between JetBlue and Spirit would have caused tens of millions of travelers to face higher fares and fewer choices. We will continue to vigorously enforce the nation’s antitrust laws,” then-Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement at the time.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent also pointed the finger at the Biden administration during a Fox News interview Sunday, saying that the merger would’ve given Spirit Airlines “much more resiliency.”

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It wasn’t the failed merger that Spirit Airlines blamed for its closure, but rather a surge in jet fuel prices brought on by the Iran war, which President Donald Trump launched with Israel in late February.

“In March 2026, we reached an agreement with our bondholders on a restructuring plan that would have allowed us to emerge as a go-forward business,” Spirit CEO Dave Davis said in a statement Saturday. “However, the sudden and sustained rise in fuel prices in recent weeks ultimately has left us with no alternative but to pursue an orderly wind-down of the Company.”

Spirit Airlines declined to comment to The Independent on the role the failed merger played in its closure.

“To be really clear, yeah, jet fuel prices have gone up,” Duffy said in his Fox News interview. But he insisted, “This story was not written because of the Iran war.”

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Buttigieg responded sharply to Duffy’s remarks on X, writing, “This is happening on Trump's watch because he doubled jet fuel prices by taking our country to war, which drove Spirit out of business. Obviously.”

The average cost of U.S. jet fuel in major cities increased from about $2.50 a gallon before the war to around $4.13 a gallon as of last Thursday, according to Argus Media’s U.S. Jet Fuel Index.

Putting blame aside, Spirit’s collapse has had real-world consequences, leaving about 17,000 employees without jobs and thousands of travelers stranded.

“This is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted,” Spirit CEO Davis said of the closure.

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