Foreign News
Spirit Airlines shutting down after rescue talks collapse
Spirit Airlines is shutting down as a business after failing to secure a $500m (£368m) bailout from the Trump administration.
The budget airline was in talks with the US government about a rescue deal which would have saved it from collapse.
But discussions collapsed and the carrier said in an announcement on its website on Saturday that with “great disappointment” the airline had “started an orderly wind-down of our operations, effective immediately”.
Spirit was emerging from its second bankruptcy filing in recent years before the US-Israel war in Iran, but the resulting surge in jet fuel costs pushed it over the brink.
All upcoming flights with Spirit have been cancelled.
In Saturday’s statement, the airline said it would automatically process refunds for any flights purchased through Spirit with a credit or debit card to the original form of payment.
Guests who booked flights via a travel agent should contact the travel agent directly to request a refund.
Compensation for those who booked flights using a voucher, credit, airline points or any other method will be determined at a later date through the bankruptcy court process.
The airline said it was unfortunately not able to reimburse guests for other related costs such as emergency hotel stays or replacement flights associated with cancelled trips.
Spirit’s customer service is no longer available, the airline said early on Saturday, but customers with questions can contact the carrier’s claims agent.
The airline’s demise was so abrupt that it has left some ticket holders in the lurch.
One Spirit customer, Yash Kothari, told the BBC’s US partner CBS News that he didn’t learn about the airline’s shutdown until he arrived at Philadelphia International Airport for a flight at 05:45 local time (09:45 GMT) on Saturday.
“The email came in at 1 am, so I was unaware,” Kothari told the outlet.
Fuel costs can make up as much as 40% of an airline’s outgoings, and airlines have seen the cost of jet fuel double since the US and Israeli strikes began at the end of February.
Savanthi Syth, airlines analyst at the investment bank Raymond James, said spiralling jet fuel costs in the wake of the Iran war had proved “the final nail in the coffin” for Spirit.
Speaking to the BBC, Syth said the operator had shied away from the radical overhaul it needed during a 2024 bankruptcy procedure.
Spirit had been in the process of making the changes it needed in its current bankruptcy process, scaling back the number of flights it was offering and aircraft it owned, she said.
But its ability to survive the year was in question even before the Iran war, Syth added.
“If it wasn’t for the fuel scenario, they would have been okay through the summer, beyond the summer I would have said it was still precarious.”
Some have been cutting flights and others have hiked fares to cope. with the cost increases. At the same time, the head of the International Energy Agency (IEA) has warned Europe could run out of jet fuel in as little as six weeks.
At the end of April, Spirit had been confident its rescue deal with the Trump administration was to be finalised imminently.
But after that deal fell through, Trump on Friday told BBC partner CBS the airline had been offered “a final proposal” to keep it in business.
The earlier plan, which would have seen the US government take effective ownership of as much as 90% of the airline, faced stiff opposition from Wall Street, Capitol Hill and even a member of Trump’s own cabinet. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy told Reuters a rescue would amount to tossing “good money after bad”.
[BBC]
The Philippine House of Representatives has voted to impeach Vice-President Sara Duterte for a second time, threatening her plan to run for president in 2028.
Monday’s vote moves the impeachment process to the Senate for trial, where if convicted, the daughter of former President Rodrigo Duterte will be disqualified from holding public office.
The 47-year-old is leading early surveys to replace her ally-turned-bitter foe, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.
The case against the vice-president stemmed from her alleged misuse of public funds and public threats against Marcos, his wife and his cousin, the former House speaker.
Duterte was impeached on the same grounds in 2025, but the Supreme Court blocked it on a technicality before the
senate trial could start.
The case was revived this year. Last week, a House committee that looked into the evidence against the vice-president ruled that there was sufficient grounds to impeach her.
Duterte described the case as “nothing more than a scrap of paper” in a formal written response. She refused to appear in the committee hearings which she said had been politically motivated.
After the impeachment vote on Monday, Duterte’s defence counsel said in a statement that “the burden now rests on the accusers to substantiate their claims” according to the law.
Monday night’s impeachment vote served as a barometer of Marcos’ support in the House. 257 of the 290 lawmakers in attendance voted to impeach Duterte, more than the one-thirds required to advance the case to trial.
But unlike in the House, a conviction in the Senate is uncertain, if a trial does start and runs its course.
In Philippine politics that is dominated by patronage and dynastic alliances, House members, who are elected per legislative district are friendlier to the incumbent president, compared to senators.
The country’s 24 senators are elected on the national level and the Senate is a traditional springboard for those hoping to run for president or vice-president in the future.
In the 2025 mid-term vote, where half of the Senate was elected, candidates allied with Duterte fared better than those who ran under Marcos’ coalition.
But the outcome of an impeachment vote will be difficult to predict under the country’s multi-party system with shifting alliances.
Duterte announced her intention to run for president in February, much earlier than expected. Marcos is limited by the constitution to a single six-year term.
She holds a 17-point lead over her nearest rival based on a survey in March by Manila pollster WR Numero.
In the 2022 elections, Duterte was the survey frontrunner to succeed her father, but she formed an alliance with Marcos and ran for vice-president instead to consolidate their support bases and fend off a reformist wave. The pair won by a landslide.
But the alliance soon unravelled as they pursued divergent political agendas.
Marcos’ allies in the House, led by cousin, then speaker Martin Romualdez, investigated allegations of fund misuse in Duterte’s office.
At the height of public scrutiny, Duterte hosted a late night online press conference, where she said she told one person that “if I get killed, go kill BBM [President Marcos], [First Lady] Liza Araneta, and [House Speaker] Martin Romualdez”.
Then in March last year, Marcos allowed theInternational Criminal Court to arrest Rodrigo Duterte and detain him at The Hague, where he now awaits trial for crimes against humanity over the hundreds who died in his so-called war on drugs.
[BBC]
A car bombing at a police post, followed by an intense firefight, has killed at least 21 officers in northwestern Pakistan, according to police and security sources.
An alliance of armed groups known as the Ittehad-ul-Mujahideen Pakistan has claimed responsibility for the attack in Bannu, a district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province bordering Afghanistan, late on Saturday.
[Aljazeera]
A person has died after jumping an airport perimeter fence in the US state of Colorado and being struck by a Frontier Airlines plane, according to authorities.
Denver International Airport said the unusual incident occurred late Friday, after the unidentified individual gained access to the tarmac.
It said the “pedestrian jumped the perimeter fence and was hit just two minutes later while crossing the runway”.
A brief engine fire followed the collision, which was put out by emergency responders, according to the airport.
It said that 12 of the 231 people on board suffered minor injuries, with five hospitalised.
The airport said investigators had examined the fence line where the individual entered and “found it to be intact”.
It added that the struck individual “is not believed to be an employee of the airport”.
“We are extremely saddened by this incident and express our sympathies to those involved,” the airport said.
Both local authorities and the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) were investigating the incident.
Airport safety in the US came under renewed scrutiny earlier this year amid a prolonged shutdown of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which temporarily left both Transportation Security Agents (TSA) and air traffic controllers working without pay.
While instances of people being killed on airport tarmacs are rare, Friday’s incident came a day after a Delta employee was killed after an airport vehicle struck an airbridge at Orlando International Airport.
In March, two pilots were killed after an Air Canada Express plane crashed into a fire-rescue vehicle at LaGuardia Airport in New York.
About 225,000 people travel through Denver International Airport a day.
[Aljazeera]
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