May 3, 2026
Hunter Peterson, a voice actor — whose video game credits (1) on IMDb include Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, Honkai: Star Rail and Smite 2 — took to TikTok after Spirit announced that it'd be shutting down to float the seemingly simple idea: What if we all just bought Spirit instead? (2)
Peterson, who previously went viral for documenting his journey flying with Spirit Airlines for 24 hours straight (3), launched LetsBuySpirit.com (4) on Saturday after his TikTok video started gaining steam. At the time of writing, the video has garnered nearly three million views.
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"I just had a genius idea," he says in the video. "There's more than 250 million individuals over the age of 18 in the United States. Now, if we took only 20% of them and paid basically the average fare of a Spirit Airlines flight — which is somewhere around $30 to $40 — we could buy Spirit Airlines … We nationalize Spirit Airlines — owned by the people."
What began as a TikTok thought experiment quickly snowballed into a campaign that has reportedly drawn tens of thousands of pledges and allegedly garnered millions of dollars.
By early Sunday, Peterson said he was "genuinely crashing out" after seeing that his site had drawn $2,314,752 million from 4,817 founding patrons with an average pledge of $481. (5) (These figures have been self-reported by Peterson and have not been verified.) Since then, various reports suggest that even more people have pledged. (6) The site currently suggests that nearly 40,000 people have pledged $26,555,000.
In fact, the idea went so viral that LetsBuySpirit.com crashed on Sunday afternoon due to sheer traffic alone. The search term "let's buy spirit com" was trending on Google with more than 100,000 searches in the last 20 hours, up 1,000%. (7)
Peterson shared the original video on Instagram (8) — where he started a new account, @SpiritAir2.0 (which already has over 100k followers), to keep users updated while the site was down — captioning it, "Let's buy spirit airlines … tag the richest person u know."
Surprised by the traction himself, Peterson asked his followers in another video: "Are we actually doing this!?" (9)
"Get in, losers, we're gonna buy an airline," he has riffed off of the legendary Mean Girls quote in his bio.
What will happen next with SpiritAir2.0?
Peterson's first video about the campaign ended with him joking that he "should make a Venmo for this." But he walked the idea back, telling followers: "Register your intent. I won't take any money. We're not going to use the Venmo anymore. That was kind of a joke."
While Peterson admits in his videos that he needs to talk with his lawyer, he outlines how he sees this plan panning out: Every patron would get one vote, no matter how much they pledge.
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"How much money you pledge [would] get you a larger percentage of the dividend of profits," he suggests. "That's at least what I think is fair and equitable, because it should be about the vote; it shouldn't be about how much money you have."
He adds that he doesn't want to take on outside money to buy Spirit Airlines but acknowledges the campaign would likely need outside investors.
"We probably will [use outside money], but it will have to be something where it's like, we'll take on your money, but then we will buy you out at some point," he says. "The control still needs to be with the people."
But only time will tell.
"Then again," he admits, "I don't know! I'm learning this in real time. This started as a joke, and it went out of control."
Peterson’s site, LetsBuySpirit.com, appears to be back up and running.
"The website is very broken," he still says in an earlier video on Sunday afternoon (10), adding that he built it in about an hour and it's "terrible," calling on developers to "please reach out."
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He also calls on PR help and asks for lawyers who have any aviation experience.
"Talk to me," he laughs.
In the Sunday video, Peterson also clarifies what he wants his role to be with the potentially new airline, calling himself the "potential CEO of the future Spirit Airlines."
"I really want to run this on behalf of the people; I don't want to own this," he says, adding that he does want to hire people with airline experience "if this actually goes through" and encouraging those who do have experience to DM him.
"I don't know what I don't know," he half-jokes, emphasizing that he's nonetheless "committing to this bit."
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Can the plan to purchase Spirit actually work?
Social media account Pubity shared a repost (11) of the campaign, which drew commenters questioning what would happen to any money pledged.
One user wrote: "Can't wait to see how badly this one turns out. What could go wrong with some guy holding onto millions of dollars of random people's money?"
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Peterson replied directly that he has "taken on $0," explaining that "these are non-binding pledges." He has subsequently emphasized that these pledges are only there to express interest.
The site — branded as "Spirit 2.0 / Owned by the People" — shows a $45 minimum pledge (about the price of a Spirit Airlines ticket).
In addition to the public’s pledges, any future venture capital or private equity backers would be "non-voting members," Peterson reiterates in recent videos. Voting power would be reserved for the public pledgers — a public alternative to private-equity ownership.
But even with the millions the site claims it has already drawn, Peterson's campaign would likely need to earn a lot more to actually acquire the airline. In February, a Louisiana investor group led by businessman John Miller, NewP3, proposed a $1 billion private capitalization of Spirit that would have moved its headquarters to New Orleans. Even that did not materialize in time. (12)
Never mind that a new operator must obtain a Federal Aviation Administration Air Operator's Certificate, which can take years and tens of millions of dollars, according to aviation analysts. Spirit cannot simply transfer its existing certificate without regulatory approval and creditor consent.
Peterson did not immediately respond to Moneywise's request for comment. In a comment on Instagram, he said that he is "not interested in talking to any publication, new source, radio station, etc." until he's spoken with his "lawyer and [has] a plan of action."
For those interested in bringing Peterson's big idea to fruition, you can follow along on his socials for regular updates.
Article Sources
We rely only on vetted sources and credible third-party reporting. For details, see our ethics and guidelines.
IMDb (1); TikTok (2); YouTube (3); Let's Buy Spirit (4); Instagram (5),(8),(9),(10),(11); Yahoo News (6); Google Trends (7); Livingston Parish News (12)
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AnnaMarie is a weekend editor for Moneywise.
