Spirit Airlines shuts down after two bankruptcies and a failed rescue plan (axios.com)

Spirit Airlines is going out of business, canceling all of its flights and stranding current travelers — marking the end of the runway for a company that offered cheap flights to America's budget travelers. Why it matters: The company's demise — which comes after two bankruptcies and a failed attempt to secure a government bailout — marks the first death of a major U.S. airline in decades. Zoom in: Spirit — which has about 17,000 employees and contractors — announced early Saturday that it will immediately wind down. The company said passengers who booked flights with credit cards or debit cards will automatically get refunds. "Guests who booked flights via a travel agent should contact the travel agent directly to request a refund," the company said in a statement." But for anyone who bought their flight via "voucher, credit" or Free Spirit points, any compensation "will be determined at a later date through the bankruptcy process." Affected passengers can visit SpiritRestructuring.com for more information. "For more than 30 years , Spirit Airlines has played a pioneering role in making travel more accessible and bringing people together while driving affordability across the industry," Spirit CEO Dave Davis said in a statement. "However, the sudden and sustained rise in fuel prices in recent weeks ultimately has left us with no alternative but to pursue an orderly wind-down of the Company. Sustaining the business required hundreds of millions of additional dollars of liquidity that Spirit simply does not have and could not procure. This is tremendously disappointing and not the outcome any of us wanted." The company thanked the Trump administration for considering providing emergency financing. Several major airlines said Friday that they'd aid Spirit customers if the budget carrier goes out of business. That included United, American and Frontier. Southwest Airlines announced early Saturday that it will provide special fares at Southwest ticket counters at the departure airport for affected Spirit ticketholders: $200 for flights of 1 to 500 miles, $300 for 501 to 1,000 miles and $400 for 1,000+ miles. The impact: The company's demise is expected to lead to an uptick in ticket prices at a time when travelers are already dealing with higher prices due to the Iran war. Indeed, the spike in jet fuel prices from the war was the last straw for Spirit, which had announced a deal to exit bankruptcy days before the war began. "What I would expect is in the markets where Spirit competed fiercely, you will see fares rise because that competition will no longer be there," Georgetown University business professor and aviation executive Shye Gilad told Axios late Friday. By the numbers: Spirit flew about 1 in 33 domestic miles in the 12-month period ending in February, according to the Bureau of Transportation Statistics . It was the eighth largest U.S. carrier during the period, ranking just behind Frontier and ahead of SkyWest. Flashback: Founded in 1964