Spirit Airlines faces lawsuit from former employees

Indexé : 2026-05-15

[00:00:00]And Spirit Airlines is facing [music] a possible class action lawsuit from their former employees who allege that the airline violated federal labor laws when they shut down operations. According to court documents, Spirit informed the employees of the shutdown the day it happened. They allege they have not received their final paychecks and are also owed compensation for unused vacation and sick time. Spirit Airlines declined to comment on the litigation.

[00:00:25]So, for more on this, I want to bring in our transportation reporter Sam Sweeney and ABC News Lead Contributor Bernardo Velaona. And Sam, I want to start with you. What exactly are these former Spirit employees asking for here? So, typically when large companies do layoffs, they have to give warnings out.

[00:00:40]It's part of the WARN Act and it happens usually uh 60 days before the people are laid off.

[00:00:47]But, this was a unique case. Spirit was fighting for its life. They were trying to get a last-minute bailout from the federal government. That, of course, proved not to work out. They couldn't get any more money from the banks and they had to shut down and they told their employees, you know, with just hours notice. And these employees are saying because they didn't get that 60-day warning, they want to be paid out for the next 60 days. They want their sick time, their vacation time, and they want medical benefits for that duration.

[00:01:14]Well, and Bernardo, we learned that some of these employees are pushing for this to be a class action lawsuit. Why is that Why is that important here?

[00:01:22]Well, because of the number of former employees. Cuz as of now, it's only six people that have signed on to this class action lawsuit. So, the claims are going to be similar. So, there's always more power in numbers. So, it'll be easier and much quicker for the courts to actually litigate all these claims if it's filed as a class action and it's filed here in New York, actually in the US Bankruptcy Court of the Southern District. So, there's a lot of claimants here, but now it's on the plaintiff to actually gather these individuals to be able to sign up and agree to be part of this class action. And also have to go through the barriers of whether the court is going to agree and say and and say that they are a legitimate class action lawsuit and can proceed. Well, and Bernarda, as this plays out, I'm I'm curious for the former employees, do they have any other legal options to get paid as this case develops?

[00:02:16]So, they can they can actually file and try to see whether they can get unemployment compensation because they were laid off as opposed to they were fired, they were actually laid off. So, that's one of the options that they can seek that's more immediate to try to get them some assistance. But, more importantly, what I'm concerned about is medical insurance. You don't know how many of these employees could have been suffering from some kind of ailment that requires immediate care. And we know that just going to the emergency room or just seeing a doctor, how expensive that can be. Yeah. Okay. Bernarda, Sam, thank you both.