In May, budget carrier Spirit Airlines collapsed into bankruptcy and its distinctive lemon‑yellow aircraft were withdrawn from service. While the airline itself ceased operations, a large set of company data remained stored in the cloud and has attracted bidders.
Google has offered $10 million — roughly 3.1 billion Hungarian forints — for the dataset. The package reportedly includes former employees' emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets, calendars, and marketing and operations data.
According to reporting, Google does not intend to use the data to launch a new airline but rather to train its artificial intelligence systems with the material.
Legal objections and delayed hearing
The proposed sale has not been universally welcomed. The Association of Flight Attendants‑CWA (AFA), which represents Spirit flight attendants, filed objections to the transaction. Because of these objections, a U.S. bankruptcy court postponed a hearing that had been scheduled for August 19; the matter is now set for September 9.
The court is expected to consider whether to approve the sale of Spirit's internal business data at that September hearing at the earliest.
Context: unusual data sources for AI training
The Spirit case fits a broader pattern in which AI companies and large tech firms acquire unconventional data sources for model training. For example, recent reporting has shown that some organizations have purchased and disassembled antique books to feed training datasets for AI systems.
The outcome of the Spirit data sale will have implications for technology development, data governance, and labor representation, as it touches on what kinds of internal corporate information can be repurposed for AI after a company's collapse.
