Spirit Airlines CEO gets $3.8 million to emerge from bankruptcy

Spirit Airlines hopes to get out of its just filed for bankruptcy in the spring of 2025, but it needs people to run the business until then. That’s part of the reason CEO Ted Christie got a $3.8 million bonus just under a week before the airline filed for insolvency.

“On November 12, 2024, Spirit’s board of directors approved the payment of one-time cash retention awards (“Retention Awards”) to Spirit’s named executive officers,” the company said in Securities and Exchange Commission application where it announced its entry into the Chapter 11 case.

The amount is less than the $6.6 million Christie received in total compensation for 2023, according to his latest annual proxy statement (padded by $1.8 million in separate retention bonuses he got after Spirit bailed by a merger with Frontier Airlines (ULCC+2.83%) for its failed connection with JetBlue Airways (JBLU+2.65%)) but greater than the total compensation of $3.4 million he received in 2022.

Christie isn’t the only person at the low-cost carrier, America’s seventh-largest airline, getting a check to stick around. Spirit also paid retention bonuses to CFO Fred Cromer ($175,000), Chief Operating Officer John Bendoraitis ($850,000), Chief Commercial Officer Matthew Klein ($250,000) and Chief Information Officer Rocky Wiggins ($300,000).

However, the money comes with strings attached. If the managers leave the company within a year, they must repay their bonuses – within 10 days of their departure. The funds may prove to be a bit of consolation as the group owns a collective Approximately 407,000 Spirit Airlines shares which is really worth nothing now that the carrier’s stock has been delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.