The Stench
Of Spirit
Of Spirit
SUNDAY, MAY 3, 2026 --
Donald Trump did not kill Spirit Airlines. Nor did his oil-price-spiking, it's-not-a-war-anymore attack on Iran.
Joe Biden did not kill Spirit. Nor did his administration's uber-aggressive opposition to airline mergers.
Covid didn't kill Spirit. Changing passenger preferences didn't kill Spirit, either. Nor did the rest of the industry's willingness to adopt Spirit's worst practices and its lowest base fares. Bad luck with wonky engines didn't kill Spirit. Insanely high jet fuel prices didn't kill Spirit. Mergers, or the lack of them, did not kill Spirit. A greedy, short-sighted board did not kill Spirit. The airline devil did not kill Spirit.
Ben Baldanza killed Spirit. But you probably won't hear his name mentioned in Spirit's obits because reckless, feckless, only-next-quarter's-earnings-matter bosses rarely pay for their corporate crimes.
Their names and reputations are always washed clean by bankruptcy filings, mergers or by the fact that the airlines they kill limp on for a bit after their disastrous reigns. Worse, business and airline writers, who should hold the cads to account, far too often lionize them instead.
It's up to us travelers to remember the indignities they foisted upon us and our fellow flyers. When airlines die, even bad ones, attention must be paid. Truths must be told.
And the cold, unvarnished truth is that Spirit Airlines, which expired, exhausted, in the early hours of Saturday morning, was killed by Ben Baldanza, a shameless, soulless executive who hated customers and forever branded Spirit as the nasty, sneering carrier of last resort for anyone who didn't have any other choice or any more money.
Baldanza himself is dead--he died much too young in 2024 after a debilitating illness--and hadn't been affiliated with Spirit for a decade after being unceremoniously ousted in 2016. But what he did in his decade as the metaphorical-mustache-twirling, who-asked-you-to-fly-with-us face of Spirit dogged the carrier into its final hours. No matter what Spirit tried after Baldanza exited as chief executive--and it tried almost everything--it couldn't escape the stench of Baldanza's passenger-repellant approach to airline travel.
Even before his arrival at Spirit, we travelers knew what Baldanza was. After all, he was one of the so-called Killer Bs who almost killed the old US Airways. His attacks on customers--and especially smart business flyers who knew a slimy airline move when subjected to it--were legendary. And even before that, some of us scribes knew Baldanza as a sleazy player who got bounced from the old Continental Airlines for fiddling expenses.
Before Baldanza fled crumbling US Airways, Spirit Airlines was known as a quirky, pleasant alternate airline that even persnickety Martin Deutsch didn't mind flying. But 18 months after he arrived at Spirit in January, 2005, one of his mentors, Bill Franke, bought in and together they crafted what they called an "ultra-low-cost carrier."
That was a euphemism for garbage. Every imaginable amenity was cut. Legroom was slashed. Services of any kind were eliminated. Advertising was slapped on everything, including air-sick bags. He treated employees like chattel and then penalized flyers when those workers inevitably went on strike.
In-your-face, up-yours nastiness was the corporate culture under Baldanza. He once denied a refund to a terminally ill Vietnam vet who was told by doctors not to fly. His logic? The vet should have bought travel insurance. His imminent death had nothing to do with Baldanza or Spirit.
An internal E-mail illuminating his philosophy once leaked out. His response to a flyer who received bad treatment on Spirit? "Let him tell the world how bad we are," Baldanza wrote. "He's never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny."
When the media dogged him for those idiocies, Baldanza's retort was: Bring it on. We're cheap to fly and no one flies us because we're nice--or even civil.
Did Baldanza cut base fares? Yes. Did he lower the total cost of flying? Only if you were very savvy and understood that he was socking you with a blizzard of fees. Some of his doozies: a "natural occurrence interruption fee," a $2.50 surcharge to cover the cost of refunds that it gave to passengers when severe weather caused Spirit to cancel flights; an $8.50 "international service recovery fee," which supposedly covered some of Spirit's costs of operating international flights; and a "passenger usage fee" of up to $8 assessed on tickets not purchased at the airport. (Eventually Spirit started charging you if you did buy tickets or print a boarding pass at the airport.) There were dozens of others, all imposed with a single purpose: Assume passengers, lured by the cheap base fare, were too stupid or too inexperienced or too desperate to know they were being fleeced.
And all of Ben Baldanza's god-awful corporate disrespect and financial usury was wrapped in a creepy candy shell of advertising sleaze. He once ran repulsive ads called M.I.L.F. He claimed it meant Many Islands, Low Fare, but flyers knew it was greasy play on a porno acronym. If it was a low-class, gutter-crawling, cringe-inducing promotion, Baldanza embraced it. You felt dirty just being in the Baldanza orbit. I eventually stopped writing about him and Spirit Airlines because I felt like I needed a shower afterwards.
But flyers who needed Spirit couldn't look away. They were being played for fools, insulted, degraded, marginalized, trivialized--and they knew it. And they never forgot. When they got enough money to fly a different airline, they did. If they moved to a market where Spirit wasn't the only option, they chose the other option. And when other airlines adopted most of Spirit's fares (and many of its surcharges), but offered them with slightly less condescension and disrespect, they abandoned Spirit.
For all the myriad reasons that Spirit folded yesterday, the one that mattered most was the stench of Ben Baldanza. It clung to the airline even a decade after he decamped. Spirit was eternally the icky, passenger-hating, fee-charging, last, worst option that Baldanza created.
In the end, airlines can't outrun their worst corporate instincts. Earning money for a couple of quarters by being the worst version of their business catches up with them in the long run.
Spirit Airlines is dead. Few will mourn. But, worse, very few will remember that Ben Baldanza sowed the seeds of Spirit's demise a decade before it went belly up.
We should remember, though. The indignities they heap upon us flyers do doom them. Eventually. The market is perfect that way.
Joe Biden did not kill Spirit. Nor did his administration's uber-aggressive opposition to airline mergers.
Covid didn't kill Spirit. Changing passenger preferences didn't kill Spirit, either. Nor did the rest of the industry's willingness to adopt Spirit's worst practices and its lowest base fares. Bad luck with wonky engines didn't kill Spirit. Insanely high jet fuel prices didn't kill Spirit. Mergers, or the lack of them, did not kill Spirit. A greedy, short-sighted board did not kill Spirit. The airline devil did not kill Spirit.
Ben Baldanza killed Spirit. But you probably won't hear his name mentioned in Spirit's obits because reckless, feckless, only-next-quarter's-earnings-matter bosses rarely pay for their corporate crimes.
Their names and reputations are always washed clean by bankruptcy filings, mergers or by the fact that the airlines they kill limp on for a bit after their disastrous reigns. Worse, business and airline writers, who should hold the cads to account, far too often lionize them instead.
It's up to us travelers to remember the indignities they foisted upon us and our fellow flyers. When airlines die, even bad ones, attention must be paid. Truths must be told.
And the cold, unvarnished truth is that Spirit Airlines, which expired, exhausted, in the early hours of Saturday morning, was killed by Ben Baldanza, a shameless, soulless executive who hated customers and forever branded Spirit as the nasty, sneering carrier of last resort for anyone who didn't have any other choice or any more money.
Baldanza himself is dead--he died much too young in 2024 after a debilitating illness--and hadn't been affiliated with Spirit for a decade after being unceremoniously ousted in 2016. But what he did in his decade as the metaphorical-mustache-twirling, who-asked-you-to-fly-with-us face of Spirit dogged the carrier into its final hours. No matter what Spirit tried after Baldanza exited as chief executive--and it tried almost everything--it couldn't escape the stench of Baldanza's passenger-repellant approach to airline travel.
Even before his arrival at Spirit, we travelers knew what Baldanza was. After all, he was one of the so-called Killer Bs who almost killed the old US Airways. His attacks on customers--and especially smart business flyers who knew a slimy airline move when subjected to it--were legendary. And even before that, some of us scribes knew Baldanza as a sleazy player who got bounced from the old Continental Airlines for fiddling expenses.
Before Baldanza fled crumbling US Airways, Spirit Airlines was known as a quirky, pleasant alternate airline that even persnickety Martin Deutsch didn't mind flying. But 18 months after he arrived at Spirit in January, 2005, one of his mentors, Bill Franke, bought in and together they crafted what they called an "ultra-low-cost carrier."
That was a euphemism for garbage. Every imaginable amenity was cut. Legroom was slashed. Services of any kind were eliminated. Advertising was slapped on everything, including air-sick bags. He treated employees like chattel and then penalized flyers when those workers inevitably went on strike.
In-your-face, up-yours nastiness was the corporate culture under Baldanza. He once denied a refund to a terminally ill Vietnam vet who was told by doctors not to fly. His logic? The vet should have bought travel insurance. His imminent death had nothing to do with Baldanza or Spirit.
An internal E-mail illuminating his philosophy once leaked out. His response to a flyer who received bad treatment on Spirit? "Let him tell the world how bad we are," Baldanza wrote. "He's never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny."
When the media dogged him for those idiocies, Baldanza's retort was: Bring it on. We're cheap to fly and no one flies us because we're nice--or even civil.
Did Baldanza cut base fares? Yes. Did he lower the total cost of flying? Only if you were very savvy and understood that he was socking you with a blizzard of fees. Some of his doozies: a "natural occurrence interruption fee," a $2.50 surcharge to cover the cost of refunds that it gave to passengers when severe weather caused Spirit to cancel flights; an $8.50 "international service recovery fee," which supposedly covered some of Spirit's costs of operating international flights; and a "passenger usage fee" of up to $8 assessed on tickets not purchased at the airport. (Eventually Spirit started charging you if you did buy tickets or print a boarding pass at the airport.) There were dozens of others, all imposed with a single purpose: Assume passengers, lured by the cheap base fare, were too stupid or too inexperienced or too desperate to know they were being fleeced.
And all of Ben Baldanza's god-awful corporate disrespect and financial usury was wrapped in a creepy candy shell of advertising sleaze. He once ran repulsive ads called M.I.L.F. He claimed it meant Many Islands, Low Fare, but flyers knew it was greasy play on a porno acronym. If it was a low-class, gutter-crawling, cringe-inducing promotion, Baldanza embraced it. You felt dirty just being in the Baldanza orbit. I eventually stopped writing about him and Spirit Airlines because I felt like I needed a shower afterwards.
But flyers who needed Spirit couldn't look away. They were being played for fools, insulted, degraded, marginalized, trivialized--and they knew it. And they never forgot. When they got enough money to fly a different airline, they did. If they moved to a market where Spirit wasn't the only option, they chose the other option. And when other airlines adopted most of Spirit's fares (and many of its surcharges), but offered them with slightly less condescension and disrespect, they abandoned Spirit.
For all the myriad reasons that Spirit folded yesterday, the one that mattered most was the stench of Ben Baldanza. It clung to the airline even a decade after he decamped. Spirit was eternally the icky, passenger-hating, fee-charging, last, worst option that Baldanza created.
In the end, airlines can't outrun their worst corporate instincts. Earning money for a couple of quarters by being the worst version of their business catches up with them in the long run.
Spirit Airlines is dead. Few will mourn. But, worse, very few will remember that Ben Baldanza sowed the seeds of Spirit's demise a decade before it went belly up.
We should remember, though. The indignities they heap upon us flyers do doom them. Eventually. The market is perfect that way.