WSJ Editorial Board Confirms: Progressive Ideology Killed Spirit Airlines
Another Lesson in the Risks of Being Ruled by Progressive ‘Experts’
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board published a strong piece today that backs the central argument of my report that ideology killed Spirit Airlines.
They add important nuance: Timothy Wu (Harvard Law School, Special Assistant to the President for Technology and Competition Policy), Jonathan Kanter (Washington University School of Law, Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust), Lina Khan (Yale Law School, Chair of the Federal Trade Commission), and others on the left sought to revive long-discredited antitrust theories that view nearly all mergers as anti-competitive.
In “Spirit Airlines and the Antitrust Left,” the Board directly blames the Biden administration’s antitrust policies — pushed by Senator Elizabeth Warren and Jonathan Kanter — for Spirit’s demise. They note that the low-fare option regulators claimed to protect is now gone entirely. Spirit is shutting down. 17,000 jobs are lost. Travelers face higher fares and fewer choices.
The Journal closes with this clear verdict: “It’s another lesson in the risks of being ruled by progressive ‘experts.’”
My report laid out the financial and economic reality. The Journal provides strong independent confirmation from a mainstream outlet that understands how markets actually work.
Government interference in the name of protecting competition often destroys it. Anti-market ideology killed Spirit Airlines. The damage is done, and consumers will pay the price.
The Wall Street Journal Editorial Board reached the same conclusion.
Here is their editorial, published this morning:
Spirit Airlines and the Antitrust Left
A case study in how Lina Khan’s theories about competition failed in the real world.
By The WSJ Editorial Board
The demise of Spirit Airlines is a tragedy for its 15,000 or so employees, though at least taxpayers weren’t forced to pay for a bailout. But the airline’s closure shouldn’t pass without giving dubious credit to the main culprits: The antitrust theorists of the Biden Administration.
Recall how Timothy Wu, Jonathan Kanter, Lina Khan and others on the left sought to revive long discredited theories of antitrust that view nearly all mergers as anti-competitive. Mr. Kanter tested that view on the airline industry, with disastrous results.
In 2021 the Biden Justice Department challenged a JetBlue Airways alliance in the Northeast with American Airlines. In 2022 JetBlue offered Spirit a $3.8 billion merger lifeline so the combined companies could offer more competition for the four U.S. airline giants. Mr. Kanter’s Antitrust Division sued to block the merger in 2023 and prevailed in court in January 2024 in one of the most bizarre opinions we’ve ever read.
Federal Judge William Young admitted Spirit’s financial troubles. He also agreed that “an expansion of all aspects of JetBlue’s business—including network, fleet and loyalty program—would allow for more vigorous competition with the Big Four, which carry most passengers in the country.”
He still ruled the merger an antitrust violation because it would eliminate one low-fare option on some routes. JetBlue ended its merger bid soon thereafter, and Spirit declared bankruptcy in November 2024, long before the Iran war fuel spike. Now it’s shutting down for good. As these columns warned after the judge’s ruling, “Justice has essentially set Spirit up for failure.”
Well, congratulations Judge Young. With Spirit’s demise, that low-fare option is gone. The big boys are likely to snap up Spirit’s planes, airport gates and other assets, and there will be less competition than if the merger had been allowed. JetBlue is also struggling these days. Judge Young owes those Spirit employees and the traveling public an apology, and so does Mr. Kanter.
Some Trump-era Republicans have also fallen for the Khan New Deal-era view of antitrust that was long in disrepute after rigorous analysis by Robert Bork and the law and economics scholars in the academy, government and the judiciary. One of those Khan aficionados, Gail Slater, was recently forced out of her job as Mr. Kanter’s successor.
The Spirit Airlines fiasco shows that when lawyers and politicians indulge in theories untethered to business reality, the results can be tragic for the lives and livelihoods of thousands of people. It’s another lesson in the risks of being ruled by progressive “experts.”
Appeared in the May 4, 2026, print edition as ‘Spirit Airlines and the Antitrust Left’.
The Editorial Board speaks for free markets and free people, the principles, if you will, marked in the watershed year of 1776 by Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence and Adam Smith’s “Wealth of Nations.” So over the past century and into the next, the Journal stands for free trade and
The employees and share holders get burned. Of course, Liz sold out just in time if reports be true. The traveling public gets in the shorts once again, courtesy of the Democrats. Many relied on the discount airline to be able to travel at all. More broken eggs on the path to utopia.
The ultimate irony is if United or American tried to buy Spirit, it might have gone through because the big boy Airlines have more lobbyists and more money to spread around than Jet Blue had.