With word that President Donald Trump was planning to bail out the failing Spirit Airlines with your tax dollars, some other budget airlines wanted to get in on it.
Can you blame them?
If you’re a big business with relatively flexible morals, putting your hand out to this administration just makes good financial sense since Trump has proven extremely amenable to taking stakes in private companies, which is a thing that the government apparently does now.
So, an undefined “group” of budget airlines—which definitely includes Frontier and Avelo—is seeking a big-time bailout of $2.5 billion from all of us.
This gets couched in investment language about how, in return, the government would get warrants that could be converted into an equity stake. That’s just a fancy way of saying that the government would become part-owner, which, in turn, is just an abstract way of saying that the American people would become part-owner.
Why, exactly, do we need to buy up a passel of those airlines that entice you with low prices but then wallop you with hidden fees? Why are we propping up a business model that consumers hate, with Frontier and Spirit routinely jockeying for the crown of being the most-loathed airline?
Well, partly because the Trump administration worked with the airline industry to get the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals to permanently vacate a Biden-era rule that would have required airlines to disclose all of those junk fees up front.
Yes, Trump’s Justice Department argued, with a straight face, that the government totally exceeded its authority by passing a rule that would create pricing transparency for consumers. So you’ll get hidden fees and as a bonus, your tax dollars will now allow the worst offenders to stay in the business of junk fees and terrible customer service.
The budget airline group says that it got to this staggering bailout number by calculating how much more money they’ll be spending this year on fuel—thanks to Trump’s war in Iran.
Related | Trump wants to rescue Spirit Airlines with your money
Let’s get this straight: Trump starts an unnecessary war and throws the global economy into chaos. Does he figure out a way to help the regular American? Nope. Instead, he bails out big businesses, his real constituency.
And that $2.5 billion? That’s on top of—not including—the proposed $500 million bailout to Spirit Airlines.
Er, wait, sorry. We might actually just be buying Spirit now, no pesky bailout fiction needed, with President Deals saying that the government would buy it, stabilize it, and sell it when fuel prices drop.
If that doesn’t seem like it actually gets you any return on your tax dollars, that’s because it doesn’t. It’s just a way to make Americans—not Spirit—responsible for Spirit’s costs of recovery.
Spirit had reportedly gotten a lifeline from former Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem, who tried to buy 10 Boeing 737s from Spirit last year for deportations and “personal travel,” but that little grift fell through.
One of the airlines looking for a handout, Avelo, told Reuters that its crappy airline is just so gosh darned necessary for the economy that, of course, a bailout makes sense, right?
Avelo “emphatically agree[s] that a healthy airline industry with strong competition is important to the U.S. economy, especially during this period of high fuel prices,” a spokesperson said.
In what world does “a healthy airline industry with strong competition” mean “the government bails out the airlines too weak to compete”?
Avelo showing up with its hands out is pretty rich, given that until the beginning of January, it was gobbling up Department of Homeland Security cash to join Trump’s deportation machine, even though it initially pretended that to not have any deportation contracts, heavens no!
Per Avelo, it terminated its work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement because “the program provided short-term benefits but ultimately did not deliver enough consistent and predictable revenue to overcome its operational complexity and costs.”
Womp, womp.
That’s quite a fall from Avelo’s initial boast that ICE flights “will provide us with the stability to continue expanding our core scheduled passenger service and keep our more than 1,100 crewmembers employed for years to come.”
So sad that the ICE fascist slush fund didn’t make it possible for these airlines to stay open, but who needs that when the president is willing to give away your tax dollars?
Remember how the GOP howled about automaker bailouts, saying that we should have just let the auto industry go under?
Times sure have changed.
Daily Kos is free for everyone—no paywall, no barriers. Help keep it that way
Daily Kos is committed to keeping all our content free. That’s why we don’t have a paywall, and never will. However, Daily Kos’ revenue is down, and we may not be able to continue producing the quality of work you have come to expect from us. Donations from our readers are our largest source of income. If you value independent, accessible, paywall-free journalism, please consider making a donation today.
OR
