‘A genius idea': TikToker launches crowdfunding campaign to buy Spirit Airlines

A TikToker has launched a crowdfunding campaign to bring back South Florida-based Spirit Airlines to have it be “owned by the people.”

Spirit announced Saturday that they had gone out of business after nearly 35 years, citing high oil prices as a major reason.

Enter Hunter Peterson, a man with nearly 200,000 TikTok followers, who posted a video after Spirit’s announcement saying he wants to buy the airline with a little help from the public.

“This is a genius idea, we nationalize Spirit Airlines, owned by the people, airline’s gone, we make a new airline, let’s buy an airline,” Peterson said in the video, which quickly racked up millions of views and hundreds of thousands of likes.

Peterson, who created a video last year where he flew on Spirit for 24 hours, launched a website to gauge interest in purchasing the airline, letsbuyspiritair.com.

As of Monday, the site had an unverified total pledged of over $88 million from nearly 125,000 people.

The website said they’re hoping to raise $1.75 billion.

“We’re not taking money, this is non-binding pledges to show interest to everyone else that we’re serious,” Peterson said in a follow-up video.