ORLANDO, Fla. — The crowd of pilots, flight attendants and maintenance workers broke away from their hugs and tears to march en masse up to the Orlando International Airport fence.
Some furiously checked their phones. Others craned their necks and held their cameras at the ready.
“There it is!” one of the flight attendants shouted, pointing through the trees.
Engines roared. The front wheel of the banana-yellow Spirit Airlines plane lifted off, followed by the back wheels and the screams from the crowd below.
After the plane left the crowd’s line of sight, employees began crying and hugging again – overcome by the symbolic nature of what they had just saw: the collapse of the airline, their decades-long careers departing with them looking from afar.
“It was sad to see it go, and I’m not in it,” 25-year flight attendant Vicky Komsky said. “This chapter of my life is over.”
The departure of the aircraft – and a second one – was a surprise and total coincidence for the hundreds of employees who planned to meet outside their former office building since hours after Spirit Airlines fell apart.
The point of the meeting was to give themselves closure. Word of the shut down came through in the early hours of the morning, when many of them were asleep.
There was never a time to say goodbye until Wednesday – when they said it in more ways than they bargained for.
“I can speak for most of us when I say this is the greatest job that we’ve ever had,” Captain Danny Khund said.
However, the employees allowed themselves to feel a small sliver of hope in their mourning. Faced with months of unemployment and the loss of seniority, they’ve been eyeing the Spirit 2.0 campaign organized on social media.
The campaign’s organizers said their goal is to buy out Spirit Airlines’ creditors and run the airline in the same way the Green Bay Packers are structured.
As of Wednesday, they claimed to have more than $200 million in verified pledges with the goal of raising $1.75 billion.
The campaign has caught the imaginations of the ex-employees, who said they’d gladly return to work if given the opportunity.
“It’s just giving me a little something to hold on to and to wish and dream that maybe I can get my family back,” Flight Attendant Angela Urbina said, reminiscing over the “trauma bonding,” she would do with her coworkers while eating meals over trash cans during a 5-day trip.
However, the employees said they were already looking for opportunities with different airlines, even if that meant starting from the bottom of the seniority ladder.
“Whoever hires me now, that’s where I belong to,” Komsky said. “I need a job.”
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