Tears, memories remain for Detroit-based Spirit Airlines crew
Operating on her schedule as a flight attendant, even on her day off, Natasha Jones, 50, of Detroit, woke up about 5 a.m. Saturday, May 2 and glanced at her phone while still in bed. There were notifications of missed emails and text messages. A bunch of them. She spotted one from her company, Spirit Airlines.
That’s how she learned that the budget airline had shuttered, and that she was among the roughly 17,000 employees, as reported by media outlets, to now be out of a job.
She started bawling.
“It felt like somebody knocked the wind out of me,” Jones said.
Jones was among multiple former Spirit Airlines employees based out of Detroit who were scrambling, in mourning or otherwise still recovering Monday, May 4 as the closure continued to reverberate in and out of the airline industry.
Former Spirit Airlines flight attendant Natasha Jones, 50, of Detroit,
The loss feels like the death of a loved one, multiple local employees told the Free Press. Several described their coworkers as family. They also described the swift and immediate termination as “hurtful" and raised concerns about how lower-income families will travel in the future.
The company began in Michigan as Charter One in the early 1980s, and years later would serve as the departure airport for the company’s final flight.
“We were more than just a company. ... This is really going to change the dynamic of flying,” Jones said.
Spirit Airlines' shuttering brings financial worries for workers
Jones previously worked in home health care but became a flight attendant a bit more than five years ago. She loved it. Spirit's Detroit workers were a tight-knit group. They are now leaning on each other.
Jones, for her part, said she was now scrambling. She wants to keep working as a flight attendant but between concerns with the economy and the job market, she will take whatever job she can get.
She also is a cancer survivor who needs to keep going to regular check-ups. She needed the health care coverage she lost, she said.
Antonio Mancheno, 32, was also working as a flight attendant out of Detroit and coming up on his 11-year mark before the news dropped Saturday. It was an honor to work at Spirit, and he made the choice to be there until the end, he said.
“The family bond at Spirit - you can’t replicate it,” he said. “We essentially know everyone’s lives, the good and the bad ... (your coworkers) see you as family. They want you to be there for their wedding or their child’s birthday parties.”
Mancheno spoke while driving back to his home in New Jersey from Florida, where he was attending a union meeting before the stop of service was announced. Spirit became part of his identity, he said. In the aftermath, he didn’t want to have to walk into an airport.
Former Detroit-based Spirit Airlines flight attendant Antonio Mancheno, 32, of New Jersey
He was feeling numb and lost on Monday and thinking of his bills and his daughter.
His 9-year-old daughter is nonverbal, autistic and takes medication for seizures, he said. The silver lining is that he’ll at least get to spend more time with her as he seeks another job as a flight attendant. But she was on his health care plan.
Employees can get temporary COBRA health coverage, but it’s unclear if they will get their final paycheck to pay for that, he said.
Mancheno sits on the executive council at both the local and master level for Spirit Airlines employees in the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA. He said Spirit had about 300 flight attendants alone in Detroit.
The union has called on the federal government to keep health plans through the end of the year, provide a supplement to state unemployment benefits and make sure workers' compensation and benefits are prioritized as the company liquidates, among other requests.
Spirit Airlines employees held onto hope before shutdown
The last several years of financial hardship for the company have been “traumatic,” the union leader said. Still, employees were hopeful that Spirit would recover as it had before.
Alexandra Redmond, 44, of Taylor, sat on the edge of her bed processing after a coworker called her with the news about 3:30 a.m. Saturday, she said. She opted to save her crying for later, though it did eventually come in sharp contrast to her planned weekend activity - celebrating her daughter’s graduation from Michigan State University
Though Redmond said she cried probably four times on Sunday, by the time her would-be work week came about, she was looking to the future.
Over the last 4.5 years, Redmond was a material logistics specialist and was later promoted to administrator, handling reports for a supervisor. Now she hopes to establish LLCs for life coaching and a delivery business.
She thinks the company could have done more to avoid its end, yet said she loved her work, got her daughter through school and built incredible relationships.
On one hand, she said: "At the end of the day pain does come, but joy comes in the morning.”
On the other hand she said: “Nobody’s job is secure,” and people have to secure themselves.
