I bailed from Spirit before it shutdown. I enjoyed my 12 years and wouldn’t do anything different… i still broke down sobbing watching the last 3 flights land in sequence at DFW just after midnight Saturday.
Even though it has been six months since my last Spirit flight, I’ve missed the crews I flew with. And I miss flying the Airbus. And I miss hanging my yellow fuzzy dice on the mag compass and putting up the minion eyes shades in the front windows.
I had gotten too cushy and lazy bidding the 2-leg 3-day trips. One leg to layover on day 1, 24+hr layover, one leg back to base on day 3. 5-6 hours of flying 15 hrs of credit. My whole plan was to keep doing that those trips, dropping 2 of the 5 PBS awarded trips and only flying 3 trips a month for the next 4 years and retire at 62.
When those trips disappeared from the monthly bids and I kept moving backwards towards reserve again and then getting bumped out of base back to commuting, I realized that the life I had gotten used to wasn’t coming back and that’s when I decided to bail.
I’m hoping that as Spirit shuts down, the employees will be made whole and are paid everything they’re owed all the way to the end. The news reports that passengers are getting their refunds makes me hopeful that crews will be made whole. So far my experience with Spirit has been positive. they have paid me everything they owed me after I left without me having to quibble for it. I got my entire 2026 vacation accural paid out in November, and last month I got my 2025 401k true up paid.
Although the 401k plan is safe. Now that I’m no longer an active participant I found that I couldn’t take advantage of the market downturn to do some in-plan Roth conversions in the Spirit 401k all I could do was look at it. Nothing else. So I had to transfer the 401k from Spirit to my new employers 401k to do some converting now that I’m on first year FO pay.
For anyone that’s over 55, after leaving employment or being laid off, as a last resort, you can utilize the rule of 55 loophole to take distributions from your last employer’s only 401k plan without incurring the 10% early distribution penalty without having to wait until 59-1/2. This does not apply to any prior employer’s 401k plan or any of your IRAs.
Usually this mechanism is used by people who retire early, allowing them to start taking retirement distributions from their 401k beginning at 55 rather than having to wait until 59-1/2 without the 10% early distribution penalty.
