A viral TikTok-born campaign to crowdfund the resurrection of Spirit Airlines has now collected more than $337 million in non-binding pledges from over 371,000 supporters, organizers behind letsbuyspiritair.com confirmed this week. The total has surged by roughly $123 million in just over a week, since NBC News first reported $214 million from 247,000 backers, turning what began as a tongue-in-cheek "Get in loser, we're buying Spirit" video into the largest grassroots airline ownership push in US aviation history.
The campaign was launched by Florida-based TikTok creator Hunter Peterson within days of Spirit's May 2 shutdown. The average pledge sits at roughly $907 per person, and Peterson has publicly modeled the structure on the Green Bay Packers β the only major US professional sports team owned by its fans through approximately 360,000 individual shareholders. The Spirit campaign has now surpassed that shareholder count, making it numerically larger than the Packers in member terms, though the comparison ends there: the Packers are an established billion-dollar franchise, not a non-binding pledge sheet.
The legal and financial barriers facing the effort are real. Securities and Exchange Commission rules cap traditional crowdfunding offerings at $5 million per twelve-month period under Regulation Crowdfunding, an amount that would not cover a single used Airbus A320, let alone the roughly $2 to $3 billion analysts estimate would be needed to acquire Spirit's name, slots, gates, and rehire a workforce. To stay inside SEC limits, Peterson has kept every pledge strictly non-binding and unfunded β supporters click an interest button rather than transferring any money. No formal bid has been filed with Spirit's bankruptcy trustee or with the carrier's secured creditors, and there is no indication the airline's owners, the Department of Transportation, or the Federal Aviation Administration are treating the effort as a legitimate acquisition path.
Skeptics β including aviation lawyers and industry analysts β have warned that even if every pledge converted to a real dollar, the campaign would still need a Regulation A+ offering (capped at $75 million), a Reg D private placement, or a full S-1 IPO to actually move money. The path from a viral hashtag to a fully certificated Part 121 air carrier with a fleet, pilots, dispatchers, and an FAA operating certificate is measured in years, not weeks.
For now, the numbers continue to climb. Peterson has hinted he is exploring partnerships with established airline holding companies and private equity that could turn the public pledge list into the customer-acquisition pipeline of a Spirit successor β yellow paint and all. Whether $337 million in clicks becomes $337 million in capital remains the central question facing US ultralow-cost flying.
Compiled from publicly available aviation news sources. Featured image: AI-generated by AviationShop. This article is original editorial content; facts have been verified across multiple public sources.
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