Spirit's Own App And Website To Blame For Massive Delays

That’s the spirit.Photo: Mario Tama (Getty Images)

It seems like Spirit Airlines only has itself to blame as the reason for nearly 90 percent of its flights being delayed on Thursday. According to a tweet from Spirit at 8:44 a.m. on Thursday, a technical issue impacted the budget airline’s website and mobile app, stifling operations.

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NBC News reports that an email statement from the airline was sent at 10:44 a.m. – two hours later – and it said that the issue had been resolved.

“We have resolved a network issue between third party services that affected our website, mobile app and some internal applications,” Spirit told NBC News in an email. “We apologize for any delay and inconvenience, and we’re now working our way back to normal operations.”

The outlet reports that a flight tracking website showed that under 24 percent of all Spirit flights were actually departing on time at 10:30 a.m. on Thursday, but then it got worse. By around noon that same day, just about 90 percent of all Spirit flights were delayed, and that’s if you’re lucky. About three percent of Spirit flights were canceled altogether.

A brutal day for Spirit passengers.Photo: Mario Tama (Getty Images)

According to that same website, Pulse by Anuvu, only 50 percent of Spirit flights have on-time departures as of 10 a.m. today – about 24 hours since the technical snafu first happened. 2.65 percent of all Spirit flights have been canceled so far.

It’s a less-than-ideal start to the Summer travel season if your app and website are crashing on the first day of June. Yeah, I know June 1 isn’t technically the first day of Summer, but for my dumb brain it is. The industry is doing its best to avoid the mess that was the Summer travel season in 2022.

It’s going to be a tough task if you consider that NBC says the Transportation Security Administration reported that 2023 screening volumes have surpassed 2019 – pre-pandemic – levels.

“We’re not out of the woods,” U.S. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg told the outlet in a pre-Memorial Day interview. “We have seen demand come roaring back for air travel – and the system has struggled to keep up.