For those who see a politician as the cause of everything that goes wrong in life, the failure of Spirit Airlines was clearly the result of Joe Biden’s Department of Justice blocking the airline’s proposed 2024 acquisition by JetBlue. Or Donald Trump’s illegal war in Iran driving up jet fuel prices.

Reality is less convenient. Spirit Airlines was a poorly run business competing in the most price-sensitive segment of an unforgiving industry. Its collapse was not the product of any single presidential administration, regulatory decision or geopolitical event. Elizabeth Warren, Donald Trump and Joe Biden were at most supporting actors in a pretty predictable script.

For airlines, failure is often the rule rather than the exception. In the past 25 years, there have been dozens of bankruptcies, including TWA (2001), United (2002), Delta (2005), Northwest (2005), and American (2011). U.S. Airways was a two-time loser, managing to file twice within three years (2002 and 2004.)

Spirit only needed nine months to file back-to-back bankruptcies (November 2024 and August 2025), before ceasing operations this month.  It was a healthy company simply derailed by fuel prices.

Spirit executives can almost be forgiven if they expected a federal bailout. Politicians are very generous in giving free taxpayer money to airlines. Since 2000, US airlines have repeatedly benefited from various bailouts totaling roughly $70 billion.  In recent months, Spirit executives are believed to have sought a meager $500 million in taxpayer handouts—an amount they might have assumed was simply their “fair share” of the government’s regular largess to the industry.

But government generosity was never going to fix Spirit.

Spirit lost money in each of the last five years, racking up a cumulative $3.1 billion in losses long before recent oil prices spikes. Spirit’s supposed savior, JetBlue, also lost money each of those years, but as a result of keen leadership and management skills, it “only” lost $2.2 billion.

Commercial aviation has always been a horrible business. Warren Buffett once joked that a farsighted capitalist should have shot Orville Wright down at Kitty Hawk to save investors from a century of losses. Moving hundreds of people in a flying tube is capital intensive, structurally low margin, and highly vulnerable to shocks.

Which may explain why the Delta, United and American have essentially become credit card companies with a captive market at 30,000 feet. In 2025, Delta reported earnings of $5 billion – which sounds impressive until you realize the company received $8.2 billion from its partnership with American Express. Delta loses money flaying passengers. United is a little less dependent on its agreement with Chase, while American’s Citi partnership generates more than twice the company’s total net income.

In a business with razor-thin margins and intense competition, simply selling cheap seats doesn’t fly.

David Moon is president of Moon Capital Management. A version of this piece originally appeared in the USA TODAY NETWORK.