A TikTok video posted hours after Spirit Airlines went dark has exploded into one of the most viral grassroots campaigns in aviation history. The Let's Buy Spirit Airlines movement, launched by 22-year-old voice actor Hunter Peterson, has gathered hundreds of millions of dollars in non-binding pledges and sparked a national conversation about who should own affordable air travel in America.

How the Let's Buy Spirit Airlines Campaign Started

Spirit Airlines announced it was ceasing operations after nearly 34 years, citing years of financial strain exacerbated by higher fuel prices caused by the war with Iran. Within hours, Hunter Peterson, a content creator with nearly 200,000 TikTok followers, posted a video proposing to buy the airline and seeking help from the public.

Peterson said there are more than 250 million adults in the United States, and if only 20% of them paid the average fare of a Spirit flight — somewhere around $30 to $40 — the public could collectively buy Spirit Airlines. The video quickly went viral, and by Saturday night Peterson launched letsbuyspirit.com, which he said crashed under its own traffic soon after.

"This started as a joke and this is rapidly going out of control," Peterson said in a follow-up TikTok video. "I step away to go to dinner, and I come back to the website and see $2.3 million pledged."

Spirit 2.0: What the Let's Buy Spirit Plan Actually Proposes

Peterson is asking people to pledge $45 — which he describes as the average price of a one-way Spirit ticket — to contribute toward a serious bid to acquire the airline. Under the proposed plan, pledge holders would become co-owners of Spirit Airlines with equal voting rights regardless of how much money was contributed. Dividends would be paid proportionally to each person's pledge amount.

The effort proposes transforming Spirit into a publicly supported, community-owned airline modeled after the Green Bay Packers. The movement has quickly gained traction among former Spirit passengers, aviation enthusiasts, and employees affected by the carrier's collapse.

Peterson placed the blame squarely on Wall Street. "Spirit didn't fail because people stopped flying. It failed because Wall Street loaded it with debt and extracted every dollar it could. The routes are real. The demand is real. The only thing missing is ownership that answers to the people — not to shareholders," a statement on the campaign website reads.

How Much Has the Let's Buy Spirit Crowdfunding Campaign Raised

The pledge totals for the Let's Buy Spirit Airlines campaign have climbed at a staggering pace since the site launched on May 2, 2026.

The campaign says it is trying to reach a target of $1.75 billion, and that this is all a proposed concept for the time being. No actual money has been collected at any point during the campaign.

Warning: Scam Sites Are Targeting Let's Buy Spirit Supporters

The campaign has gained so much momentum that scam sites have spawned in its wake. Peterson posted on TikTok to clarify that the only official sites associated with his movement are letsbuyspirit.com and letsbuyspiritair.com, and reiterated that pledges only show intent at this time and no money is actually being collected. If a Spirit ownership site asks for payment information, it is a scam.

The clearest signal that the official campaign is not a scam is that nowhere on letsbuyspiritair.com is anyone being asked to send actual money. What supporters are submitting is a non-binding pledge — a statement of how much they would theoretically be willing to contribute if the campaign ever materializes into a real regulated investment offering. No credit card field. No payment information of any kind.

Can the Let's Buy Spirit Airlines Campaign Actually Work

Experts have raised serious questions about whether the Spirit 2.0 model is legally and financially achievable, even with hundreds of millions in pledged interest.

The two examples Peterson invokes — the Green Bay Packers and WinCo Foods — are not the best fits. The Packers are the only publicly owned franchise in major American sports but only because the team was grandfathered in before the NFL banned the structure in 1960. A share of Packers stock now confers no equity, has no payout, and cannot be traded. Neither model translates directly onto a community of strangers pledging $45 each over the internet for a piece of a defunct airline.

There are also multiple regulatory steps required to take over and maintain an airline, including obtaining an FAA Air Operator's Certificate — a time-consuming and expensive process. Transferring Spirit's existing certificate would require both regulatory approval and the consent of Spirit's creditors. Despite the long road ahead, the Let's Buy Spirit Airlines movement has already done something remarkable: it has forced a national conversation about the future of budget air travel and who gets to own it.