A lot moved in the week since our last issue, including the hearing we told you to watch. Here’s what actually happened, sourced to the filings.
1. The LaGuardia Slots Are Sold — and the Real Number Is Lower Than We Had
JetBlue won the auction for all 22 of Spirit’s LaGuardia slots, with a winning bid of $58.5 million.
Seven airlines competed over more than 14 hours starting the morning of July 16; the runner-up was Frontier Airlines at $57.5 million. That replaces the $86.7 million figure we’d been carrying as unverified since Issue 003 — this is a real, concluded sale, not an estimate.
(Source: Debtors’ Reply to Ihsan Air, LLC’s Objection, Docket 1372, citing the Notice of Auction Results, Docket 1352.)
A new challenger showed up and lost — and it’s worth understanding why.
Ihsan Air, LLC, a prospective new-entrant airline, objected to the sale and asked the court to carve out 6 of the 22 slots for itself at roughly $16.4 million, arguing the process was rushed and favored incumbent carriers. According to the Debtors’ reply, Ihsan did submit a bid — but it never qualified. Ihsan didn’t provide proof of financial wherewithal despite PJT Partners asking twice in writing, and didn’t post the required 10% cash deposit. The Debtors also argue Ihsan lacks legal standing to object at all, since courts have generally held that a bidder who didn’t win a bankruptcy auction can’t challenge the sale afterward. The Debtors’ urgency here isn’t just optics: LaGuardia has an FAA “use-or-lose” rule requiring slots to be actively used, and the waiver covering Spirit’s dormant slots expires August 1 — after that, the FAA could simply reclaim them, leaving the estate with nothing to sell.
(Source: Ihsan Air, LLC’s Objection, Docket 1359; Debtors’ Reply, Docket 1372.)
Worth Noting: the July 22 hearing was where this dispute was set to be argued in court (”going forward on a contested basis,” per the hearing agenda), and we don’t yet have the signed order resulting from that hearing — only the parties’ written arguments. The auction outcome itself is confirmed; whether Ihsan’s formal objection was overruled is what we’re still tracking down.
2. The Fight Over the Brand and Domain Escalated Into Two Real Motions
Ameer Flippin of Harlem Park Partners isn’t just emailing PJT and FTI anymore. He’s filed two formal motions: one to stay the sale of Spirit’s brand name and domain IP assets (July 16), and one to compel PJT Partners and FTI Consulting to grant him data room access (July 17) — the access dispute we first saw referenced in his own email correspondence back in Issue 003 is now in front of the judge directly.
Both motions are scheduled to be heard on August 12 at 11:00 a.m. — which Flippin is separately objecting to, because the court is scheduled to approve the sale of those same IP assets at 10:00 a.m. that same day, one hour earlier. His argument: the court shouldn’t sign off on selling the brand and domain before ruling on whether he’s entitled to see the data room he’d need to properly bid on them.
(Source: Objection of Ameer Flippin to Notice of Revised Timeline, Docket 1377.)
3. The Timeline Moved Again
For everything except the Campus Properties, the Detroit Hangar, and specified spare engines (which remain on their own schedule), here’s the current sequence:
Date What’s happening August 3, 2026, 4:00 p.m. Final bid deadline August 6, 2026, 10:00 a.m. Auction August 7, 2026 Target date for Debtors to file auction results August 10, 2026, 4:00 p.m. Deadline to object to the winning bid August 12, 2026, 10:00 a.m. Sale Hearing August 12, 2026, 11:00 a.m. Hearing on Flippin’s Motion to Stay and Motion to Compel
(Source: Notice of Revised Timeline, Docket 1353.)
4. Florida Air Express Files an Emergency Motion to Halt the Sale Process
On July 20, Florida Air Express Airlines (FAE), through Gillead appearing pro se, filed an emergency motion asking the court to (1) compel the Debtors to hand over a complete listing of Spirit’s operations assets along with the Debtors’ own fair-market valuation of them, and (2) pause the entire bidding process and stay the May 8 Liquidation Order until FAE’s proposal gets full consideration.
The motion’s stated reason for filing: Debtors’ counsel has never acknowledged, responded to, or objected to FAE’s proposal since it was filed back in June, despite it being — in FAE’s telling — the only offer on the table to acquire the entirety of Spirit’s operations assets in one transaction. FAE argues that continuing a piecemeal, asset-by-asset sale process while leaving that proposal unanswered raises a real question about whether the Debtors are meeting their fiduciary duty to maximize the estate’s value for stakeholders. That duty is a genuine, well-established principle of bankruptcy law — whether staying silent on one unsolicited proposal actually breaches it is FAE’s legal argument for why the court should intervene, not a conclusion any court has reached.
We don’t have anything showing this motion was granted. The proposed order attached to FAE’s own filing is not a signed order — attaching a draft of the order you want is standard practice for any motion, and this one has a blank signature line and no judge’s signature on it. It also doesn’t appear anywhere on the official agenda for the July 22 hearing, and the Debtors were filing briefs defending the JetBlue sale that same week with no indication a stay was in effect. We’ll report the outcome once we can confirm it.
(Source: Florida Air Express Airlines, Inc.’s Emergency Motion, Docket 1369.)
5. Smaller Items Worth Knowing About
A Consumer Privacy Ombudsman has been appointed.
The U.S. Trustee appointed Lucy L. Thomson to that role on July 17, and the court approved it July 23. This is a required step under federal bankruptcy law whenever a debtor’s plan involves transferring customers’ personal data in a way that isn’t consistent with the original privacy policy — most likely tied to the loyalty program data sitting in one of Spirit’s Cayman-based entities. We don’t yet have the ombudsman’s actual report or recommendations, just the appointment itself.
Two more professionals filed June fee statements:
Willkie Farr & Gallagher (additional counsel) billed $201,006.50 for June, and Alton Aviation Consultancy (an advisor to the Unsecured Creditors Committee) billed $18,433.50. These are separate from and much smaller than the four firms in our Issue 003 fee table — noted here for completeness, not as a new version of that comparison.
What We’re Asking This Week
Mark August 12 — it’s now the date for both the next Sale Hearing (10:00 a.m.) and the ruling on Flippin’s data-room fight (11:00 a.m.).
The deadline is July 27, 2026, at 11:59 p.m. to file a claim for anything owed to you from before the May 2 shutdown — Get it logged: https://spiritdidnotpayme.com/take-action/. Claims tied to the shutdown itself — your final paycheck, severance, WARN Act pay — are NOT covered by this date! We don’t yet have the deadline for those and will report it the moment we do.
If you were a Free Spirit member, watch for the Consumer Privacy Ombudsman’s report — it should say more about what happens to member data in any sale.