Tangle - Spirit Airlines shuts down.

Starting point is 00:00:00 From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul. It is Monday, May 4th. And today we're going to be talking about the Spirit Airlines shutdown, really interesting debate, policy debate, regulatory debate. somehow some partisan warfare here. We can even fight about airplane closures. Go us. It's a good one. I'm excited to jump in.

Starting point is 00:00:51 But before we do, I do want to give you guys a quick heads up about the Friday piece. So I wrote this piece on Friday, and we recorded it for the podcast about the corruption in the Trump administration and the self-dealing and just the absurdity of all of it when you look at it all in one place. I tried not to pull any punches. I make this promise to you guys, my listeners, that I'm going to be honest about my feelings and my beliefs on these specific issues that we cover every day. And this was a story that I had just been brewing in the background. And I'd been keeping notes, obviously, and keeping this document for 15 months of all these different stories about self-dealing

Starting point is 00:01:32 in the Trump administration. And I wasn't sure when I was going to put pen to paper and make it happened, but I'm glad I did it when I did. The moment seemed right for it. And the story has gotten a bunch of traction. It's been picked up by a bunch of other reporters and media outlets, I blew up on Twitter a bit. And because of all the inbound and also because we got so many emails about it from readers, we have dropped the paywall on the story. We'll also release a non-paywalled podcast version of the story. So anybody will be able to access it. it for free. But right now, if you go to readtangle.com, you'll see the story featured on our homepage. And I encourage you to do that if you want to check it out. The piece, by the way,

Starting point is 00:02:18 is titled the Everything Everywhere, All at Once, Corruption Story. We do this sometimes. We drop paywalls when we have super, super, super high demand or viral-ish stories that are getting a bunch of outside attention from other people. We usually let the paywall sit for a few days and then do that it's rare. So you do have to subscribe to become a member in order to unlock our content. But every now and then, you know, a few times a year, a story like this really breaks through. And we want to, you know, expose new people to tangle on how we do our work. And look, I, you know, I've gotten some emails. I've talked to some people on the side. I know there were some strong reactions to the piece from people across the political spectrum. Some really happy we did it. Some

Starting point is 00:03:06 pissed off we did it so late, some angry because they felt like it was unfair in terms of how we covered Biden or Obama, even though Tangle didn't exist when Obama was president. I tried to address some of those responses in the comment section of the newsletter. I've been responding to emails. And yeah, look, I appreciate everybody's criticism and feedback. There were some arguments I wish I addressed in the piece. You know, a lot of people, I think on the right, a lot of Trump supporters said things like, well, what about Obama? He went into office worth X amount of dollars and left worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

Starting point is 00:03:41 He clearly got rich from the presidency, and you don't write about him like this. Which on the surface, I think, is a totally fair point, by the way. The difference is just we know how Obama made his money. It was book deals, TV shows, documentaries, speaking tours. It's documented because he filed the income in his taxes. I have the paper trail of Barack Obama and Michelle Obama's wealth, and they profited off of their celebrity, for sure.

Starting point is 00:04:12 There's no doubt about that. That feels fundamentally different to me than the really shady, super opaque deals that are happening between President Trump and people, countries, organizations, etc., that he's definitively regulating, interacting with, and exchanging favors for. That is something separate from Barack Obama signing some huge book deal or, you know, a Hulu documentary or whatever it is, or Michelle Obama making a bunch of money off of her celebrity as first lady. Neither of those things feel good to me, but like what Trump is doing is way, way worse.

Starting point is 00:04:53 It just is, in my view, it feels way worse. And I think I could convince anybody of that argument if you took the names of the people out and it wasn't a partisan game. So that's how I feel about it. That was a piece of feedback. I wish I preempted and addressed before the story was published or in the story itself.

Starting point is 00:05:15 And I appreciate it. So those are the kinds of things that are happening. I'm going to keep talking about this piece this week later on, probably on suspension of the rules and some of the feedback. And I'm excited for that. And maybe we'll write a follow up or answer some questions

Starting point is 00:05:27 that have come into the inbox. But appreciate, again, everybody reading it. And please do share it. It is a great introduction to some of the original work that we do in my view. And I want more people to know about Tangle. So I appreciate all of you. All right, with that, I'm going to hand it over to John for today's main story, what the left and the right and some airline industry experts are saying.

Starting point is 00:05:48 And then I'll be back for my take. Thanks, Isaac. And welcome, everybody. Hope you all had a wonderful weekend. It is a new week, a new day, which means another opportunity for a fresh start. and to put our best foot forward. So let's bring the best of ourselves to everything that we do in the hopes of spreading some positivity and joy to those around us and beyond.

Starting point is 00:06:18 First up, Iran said that it sent a 14-point peace proposal to the United States and that it had received a response, though President Donald Trump said that he has not reviewed the plan in detail. Separately, President Trump announced that the United States military will assist ships attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz by offering information on the best routes to avoid mines. Number two, the Pentagon announced that the U.S. would withdraw about 5,000 troops from Germany over the next 12 months.

Starting point is 00:06:45 The move follows President Trump's threats of withdrawal after German Chancellor Friedrich Mears criticized the Iran war. Number three, the Supreme Court issued an administrative stay on an appeals court ruling that had temporarily blocked mail-order distribution of Mephryston. The order puts the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals decision on hold until May 11, Number four, on Monday, a trial began to adjudicate the second phase of a lawsuit brought by New Mexico's Attorney General against META. The social media company is accused of harming young users' mental health and failing to protect them from sexual exploitation. In March, a jury found META guilty of violating New Mexico's consumer protection law and ordered it to pay $375 million in damages.

Starting point is 00:07:29 And number five, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani was hospitalized in critical but stable condition. The cause of his hospitalization has not yet been shared. This morning, Spirit Airlines shutting down operations overnight, ending more than three decades in the skies. The low-cost carrier known for its bare-bones fares ceasing all flights as of 3 a.m., and what the company calls an orderly wind down of operations. On Saturday, Spirit Airlines announced that it was canceled. all flights and beginning an orderly wind down of its operations. The budget airline had been struggling since the COVID-19 pandemic and hasn't posted a profitable

Starting point is 00:08:20 year since 2019. President Donald Trump had sought a deal to bail out the company before its shutdown, but failed to reach an agreement with bondholders. About 17,000 Spirit employees and contractors are expected to lose their jobs. Union representatives are negotiating with the airline to grant compensation packages to affected workers. For context, Spirit Airlines was known for having lower base fares than competitors, but many additional fees. The airline lost $2.5 billion between 2020 and 2024 and had struggled recently with engine defects, expiring leases on its jets and high fuel prices. These difficulties resulted in the airline declaring bankruptcy in 2024 and again in 2025. Spirit attempted to merge with JetBlue in 2022.

Starting point is 00:09:05 However, the Biden Justice Department sued to stop the deal and a federal judge blocked the move in 2024 over concerns that it could raise ticket prices and lead to significant debt for JetBlue. On Saturday, the Department of Transportation announced that several airlines, United, Delta, JetBlue, and Southwest have agreed to cap or reduce ticket prices for Spirit customers looking to rebook their upcoming flights. Meanwhile, American Airlines, Delta and Allegiant have announced temporarily reduced prices on routes they shared with Spirit, while Frontier will discount prices across its network. Spirit said it would automatically process refunds for customers who booked it directly with the airline, telling customers who booked through an intermediary to contact their

Starting point is 00:09:45 agent. Unfortunately, despite the company's efforts, the recent material increase in oil prices and other pressures on the business have significantly impacted Spirit's financial outlook, Spirit said in a statement. With no additional funding available to the company, Spirit had no choice but to begin this wind down. As Spirit's financial outlook worsened in the past month, the Trump administration offered a $500 million bailout that would have given the U.S. government up to a $1.000. 90% stake in the company. However, the administration could not reach an agreement with spirit bondholders. The Trump administration blamed the Biden administration for spirit shutdown, arguing it should not

Starting point is 00:10:21 have blocked the spirit jet blue merger. Yet another mess the traveling public has to inherit, thanks to the radical policies of Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy said. In blocking the JetBlue spirit merger in 2024, they turned their backs on the American consumer and our great aviation workforce. Democrats have argued that the Trump administration brought the economic conditions that led to Spirit closing its doors. Spiking fuel prices from Trump's war was the nail in the coffin for twice bankrupted Spirit Airlines, Senator Elizabeth Warren, the Democrat from Massachusetts said. For what it's worth, the Jet Blumerger failed because a judge, appointed by Ronald Reagan, said the deal was illegal. Today, we'll share views from the left,

Starting point is 00:11:03 right and airline insiders on Spirit's shutdown. And then Isaac's tape. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right. First up, let's start with what the left is saying. Many on the left worry about the ripple effects of Spirit's closure. Others point toward flawed regulation and anti-competitive tactics as drivers of Spirit's demise. In the Atlantic, Sahel Desai wrote,

Starting point is 00:11:42 The only thing worse than Spirit Airlines is a world without Spirit Airlines. The end of Spirit was sudden and dramatic, but not unexpected. The budget airline had long been going through it. One failed merger after the next, two bankruptcies within the span of a year. And finally, rising fuel costs from the Iran War that turned a bad situation into a dire one, Desai said. Spirit was the airline of the masses, the kind of people who packed their own sandwiches instead of paying $21 for a turkey wrap at Hudson News. Because Spirit was so focused on budget travelers, the airline operated in many

Starting point is 00:12:17 smaller cities that otherwise had few other options. The paradox of spirit is this. It was a horrible airline to fly, but it also allowed more people to fly than ever before. When you're forced to squeeze inside a middle seat of Road 27, it's not hard to feel nostalgic about a time when flying was glamorous and comfortable. In the 1950s, Pan Am passengers and coach were served stuffed guinea hen. Flying round trip from Los Angeles to New York cost $208 in 1958. In today's dollars, That's $2,377,000. Since 1995, average airfare in the U.S. decreased by 41%. Now, cheaper flights are becoming harder and harder to come by. Spirit is gone, and other budget airlines, JetBlue and Frontier, are also struggling. In his big newsletter, Matt Stoller explored who killed Spirit Airlines.

Starting point is 00:13:10 The most obvious reason is Donald Trump, who launched a war with Iran that caused jet fuel prices to double. Jeff Fuel takes up 20 to 30% of the operating cost of an airline, and all airlines globally are canceling flights and hiking prices, Stoller, said. The big airlines are also acting to prevent the low-cost carriers from bleeding off the cream from their fixed costs. We have to start asking why the same tactics keep recurring for 45 years, along with routine government bailouts, and the cause is deregulation. Airlines are public utility systems, but are regulated like they aren't. So who killed Spirit Airlines? Well, there's a bit of a murder on the Orient Express dynamic to it. Yes, it was Trump's Iran war-spiking costs,

Starting point is 00:13:52 but it was also JetBlue sabotaging Spirit's frontier deal and the Big Four legacy airlines, and Bush and Obama enforcers, regulators, blessing a roll-up of power to the Big Four, Stoler wrote. Spirit won't be the last to go. And until we decide as a country, we want an airline system that serves all of us and put the rules in place to make that happen,

Starting point is 00:14:12 it's going to get worse. All right, that is it for what the left is saying, which brings us to what the right is saying. Many on the right say the blocked merger led to Spirit's downfall, highlighting the failures of antitrust advocacy. Some argue the Trump administration was right not to bail out the airline. The Wall Street Journal editorial board wrote about Spirit Airlines and the Antitrust left. Recall how Timothy Wu, Jonathan Cantor, Lena Kahn, and others on the left sought to revive long-discredited theories of antitrust that view, nearly all mergers is anti-competitive. Mr. Cantor testified that view on the airline industry with disastrous results, the board said. Federal Judge William Young admitted Spirits' financial

Starting point is 00:15:02 troubles. He still ruled the merger in antitrust violation because it would eliminate one low-fair option on some routes. Jebelu ended its merger bid soon thereafter, and Spirit declared bankruptcy in November 2024, long before the Iran fuel spike. Congratulations, Judge Young. With Spirit's demise, that low-fair option is gone. The business is gone. The business is a big of Big boys are likely to snap up Spirit's planes, airport gates, and other assets, and there will be less competition than if the merger had been allowed. JetBlue is also struggling these days, the board wrote. The Spirit Airlines fiasco shows that when lawyers and politicians indulge in theories untethered to business reality, the results can be tragic for the lives and livelihoods

Starting point is 00:15:42 of thousands of people. The Washington Post editorial board said, Sean Duffy stands up for taxpayers. Transportation Secretary Sean P. Duffy opposed bailing out Spirit Airlines and went one step further on Saturday to say that there is no need for a federal bailout of any low-cost airline. While limited government instincts seem to have atrophied for many Republicans, Duffy has retained the good sense of opposing government bailouts for private companies, the board wrote. Duffy reportedly opposed Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnik, who pushed for the bailout with the possibility of an up to 90% stake in spirit for the federal government.

Starting point is 00:16:16 If the government is going to help Spirit deal with high fuel prices, the trade group for low-cost airlines said, why not set up a $2.5 billion fund to help all of them? That would have been five times larger than the proposed Spirit bailout, showing how quickly government interventions in the economy spiral, the board said. Duffy has poured cold water on that idea as well. It's better for them and it's better for taxpayers. They've bailed out airlines enough times in the past. If people who work in the industry can't figure out how to turn Spirit around, there's no reason to believe cabinet secretaries could do any better. All right, that is for what the left and the writer saying, which brings us to what airline insiders are saying.

Starting point is 00:16:55 Many aviation writers say Spirit's business model was risky, but the airline provided significant value to travelers. Some argue the government should have bailed Spirit out. In the points guy, David Slotnick called the shutdown a sad ending for the storied budget carrier. Spirit has spent the last year trying to reposition itself as a dynamic airline with both its famous low-cost base fares with a la carte pricing for add-ons, as well as things like packaged fairs that include things like onboard snacks and even first-class seats,

Starting point is 00:17:24 trying to take advantage of the post-pandemic finding that premium revenue is increasingly crucial for U.S. airlines. However, it appears to have been too little too late, Slotnik wrote. The Death of Spirit represents an end to a storied budget airline that, for whatever complaints people may have had, offered cut-rate fares that made travel more accessible for more people. Unbundled fares, with add-ons for everything from bags to seat selection, proved to be so competitive that it forced a legacy airlines to introduce basic economy. Spirit, for instance, was the first airline to begin charging for carry-on baggage, Slot Nick said. As recently as 2019, the model worked, with Spirit turning a profit going into the pandemic.

Starting point is 00:18:03 But the competition from bigger airlines' basic economy fairs, With more flights on the same routes, better reputations and tempting loyalty programs bolstering the bare-bones offering turned out to be another blow to spirit. In Live and Let's Fly, Kyle Stewart said, saving spirit was cheap, letting it fail expensive. The spirit effect was real. It kept pricing within the lowest tier of the market, and it pulled the middle tier down with it. On routes like Pittsburgh to South Florida, American Airlines can charge close to $500 round-trip non-stop into Miami whenever it wants to. JetBlue might run $250 into Fort Lauderdale on a good day. Spirit was $100, Stewart wrote. Spirit set the floor.

Starting point is 00:18:44 JetBlue priced against it. American had to acknowledge it existed. That floor is gone. JetBlue is not going to keep Fort Lauderdale fairs a $250 round trip when the only other competitor charges $500. The Trump administration offered Spirit a $500 million loan, structured so the government would take a 90% equity stake and sit at the front of the line ahead of existing bondholders in any repayment.

Starting point is 00:19:08 Was $500 million good money after bad? Maybe. But consider the alternative framing. The U.S. population is roughly 335 million people. Split that bailout evenly across every American, and it costs about $1.49 a person, Stewart said. U.S. airlines carry close to a billion passengers a year. A $30 average fare increase across even a fraction of those passengers

Starting point is 00:19:31 adds up to multiples of the bailout cost. And unlike the loan, that money goes straight to the American, Delta, and United, rather than coming back to the government with interest. All right, let's head over to Isaac for his take. All right, that is it for the left and the writer saying, which brings us to my take. Spirit Airlines was always exactly what it said it was. It was a budget airline that would get you from point A to point B as cheaply as possible. Like many people, I've had a love-hate relationship with the airline for most of the

Starting point is 00:20:13 most of my life. In my early 20s, when I was too broke to fly on other airlines, Spirit got me all over the country on the cheap. If you could pack light and get past the ticket checker without them detecting a second carry-on, $90 to $150 could get you to most cities in the country. Yes, it often felt like you were riding a public sky bus to get there, but that was part of the charm. selling cheap flights isn't a business model that engenders much customer appreciation, but I'm especially grateful to Spirit Airlines because they made it possible for me to regularly see my grandmother in Fort Lauderdale before she died at the age of 97. For millions of Americans, budget airlines like Spirit are a lifeline,

Starting point is 00:20:58 a connector to family, friends, and experiences that otherwise would not be possible. I'm sad for the loss of this service. I'm especially sad for the 17,000 workers who just live. lost their jobs, and I suspect ticket prices are about to go up without a competitor pulling everyone to the bottom, which would be a loss for everyone who flies. Yet, it has to be said, the airline also almost always provided a miserable experience. Cancelled flights, rolling delays, unconscionably cramped seating, hidden fees, bad on plane service, malfunctioning air conditioning, pretty much anything that could go wrong on an airplane did go wrong anytime I chose to fly spirit.

Starting point is 00:21:37 The company seemed strangely proud of its patchy operations offering the customary PA message of welcome back to all our customers who swore they'd never fly with us again. That sort of low-cost audacity exemplified the love-hate relationship I have with them, which is all just to say I felt a pang of nostalgia when I heard the news, combined with the immediate reaction of, well, yeah. The partisans have gotten on their sides. Look at us. We can even fight about an airline closure.

Starting point is 00:22:06 and as usual are selling their audiences only part of the story. Anyone narrowly blaming the Biden administration or Trump's war in Iran isn't interested in an honest post-mortem. The real culprit, if you absolutely had to pick one, is neither Iran nor some failed merger. It's the pandemic. Spirit was actually quite profitable before COVID-19, and it was actually one of the better-performing airlines in the United States by some metrics. In 2019, it was operating at a 12-point-9. margin and had $1.1 billion in cash. In 2018, it had a 15.8% margin. Then, the pandemic came and broke the model. Demand cratered, and by the end of 2021, Spirit posted a $472 million loss. Post-COVID inflation continued

Starting point is 00:22:56 to crush the business, and it hasn't had a profitable year since. It simply never recovered. Other challenges didn't kill Spirit, but they did throw dirt on the coffin. Jet fuel prices have skyrocketed since the beginning of the Iran War, and unlike other airlines, Spirit was not well positioned to withstand an oil shock. While some airlines hedge against fuel price increases by buying future contracts on jet fuel derivatives, Spirit explicitly noted that it didn't have enough capital to make those purchases, and thus had no such protection. So, when fuel prices went up, it was in a worse position to soften the blow than other airlines. The failed merger is even more complicated. While it's true that the Biden administration challenged the JetBlue

Starting point is 00:23:39 Spirit merger, it's also true that a Reagan-appointed judge blocked the merger after it went to trial, and that JetBlue's own internal documents showed prices could go up by as much as 40% on overlapping routes. This merger was going to eliminate too much competition to get approved by a Republican-appointed judge is much less punchy than Biden killed Spirit Airlines, but it's also true. Of course, the merger may not have been blocked if the Biden administration hadn't challenged it, but that's no guarantee either. Some state attorneys general were co-plaintiffs in the case. Private parties sue under antitrust law all the time, and again, the case actually went to trial before the ruling came down, indicating the evidence was strong. Had the merger gone through,

Starting point is 00:24:22 though, the possibility that would have helped consumers feels like a coin flip. On the one hand, a Spirit JetBlue merger could have maintained some low-cost routes and kept some downward pressure on prices. That would have been a win for consumers and upwards of 17,000 employees. On the other hand, such a merger would have been an end to the airline, but by a different means. If you've flown both, you know JetBlue and Spirit are very different, and JetBlue's entire bid was based on the premise that it would take over Spirit's routes, raise the prices, and start flying people on JetBlue planes. also possible that thousands of Spirit employees still would have been laid off as a result of the merger.

Starting point is 00:25:02 Before the JetBlue deal was accepted, Spirit CEO urged shareholders to reject it over concerns about antitrust regulations. The entire Spirit JetBlue merger was actually part of an effort to stop Spirit from merging with Frontier, another low-cost budget airline that likely would have forced some of the larger airlines to bring down their prices even further. That was the merger that would have really benefited consumers the most. Ultimately, spirit merging with JetBlue would have been worse than its merger with Frontier, but spirit shutting down is the worst outcome of all. And of course, there's been a lot of chatter about whether the Trump administration should have bailed the airline out. Broadly speaking, I'm against the government picking winners and losers in the private sector.

Starting point is 00:25:43 I don't hand over my tax dollars so failing private businesses can pay lobbyists, convince the government to give them my money. I'd say this is a principle I believe in, though not an absolute red line. I can imagine some scenarios where a government bailout of a major corporation might be necessary because the consequences of not doing so would be so grave, and this situation really doesn't come close to qualifying as one of them. Ultimately, I think the Trump administration made the right decision by not granting Spirit a cushy bailout.

Starting point is 00:26:15 The bar for this kind of bailout should be extremely high. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy put it in simple terms. There's been a lot of money thrown at Spirit, and they haven't found their way into profitability, he said. If no one else wants to buy them, why would we buy them? In the end, this is a sad story about a genuinely helpful service not being able to survive a once-in-a-lifetime economic shock. That's the main ingredient, even though plenty of others give this episode its flavor,

Starting point is 00:26:42 corporate greed, government regulation, partisan infighting. Every business in today's economy has to cook with those ingredients, and no matter how important you think each one is or isn't, the hard reality is that Spirit just wasn't capable of doing so. All right, that is it for my take. We have a staff dissent today from Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead. I'm going to pass it over to her, and then I'll be back for your questions answered. This is Associate Editor Audrey Moorhead with a staff dissent.

Starting point is 00:27:13 Even if blocking the Spirit JetBlue merger was legally defensible, that's only proof that existing antitrust laws end up hurting the overall market rather than helping it. Yes, a merger would have raised prices along Spirit's routes, but the resulting company still could have mounted genuine competition against the Big Four Airlines that kept prices lower across the board. Now, Spirits' ultra-low fares for consumers are gone, just two years after the federal government supposedly acted to preserve them. Meanwhile, JetBlue may be on the way out, too,

Starting point is 00:27:46 leaving consumers with dwindling low-cost options and a market that continues to be dominated by the Big Four Airlines. We'll be right back after this quick break. All right, thanks, Audrey. This is your questions answered, and today's question is from Linda in Saxony, Germany. Linda said, I'm a native speaker of the English language and as somewhat active in literature,

Starting point is 00:28:19 I am a fairly robust reader. I don't understand how you think any person reading with more depth than a simple scan could cover today's newsletter in 14 minutes or less. Or do you assume that your readers only scan the enormous amounts of material that you put out? Okay, we get this question a lot. If you've been a long time, Tangle, listener, a reader, you've probably heard this a million times. And this is a question specific for our newsletter.

Starting point is 00:28:42 This is a bit of a sliding scale for us in something that we've experimented with over time, but we've generally fallen into a specific rubric year. Assuming a reading speed of 300 words per minute, which is in line with the average pace for the high school to college age readers, we aim for 4,000 of 4,400 words in the newsletter. Then we approximate the reading speed to these guidelines. Under 4,200 means 13 minutes. Between 4,200, 4,450 is 14 minutes, between 4,450 words, and 4,650 words is 15 minutes, and the rare cases we exceed that would be 16 minutes. As you can see, those cutoffs don't line up exactly to 300 words per minute, but we tend to most often fall around 4,300 to 4,500 words, and want to use extra specificity for that range. A few notes on this rubric. One, we know a

Starting point is 00:29:33 a lot of readers take the time to follow our links and check our citations, a great practice, but also one that inflates one's reading time. Second, those calculations don't include ads that can add to the total length of our emails, not a lot, but enough to make a bit of a difference. And lastly, reading times are usually a little slower on screens than on print media, so that difference may be affecting even the fastest readers. Generally, though, those read times are estimates, averages are just averages, and plenty of people will fall above or below them.

Starting point is 00:30:02 All right, that is it for your questions answered. I'm going to send it back to John for the rest of the pod, and I'll see you guys tomorrow. Have a good one. Peace. Thanks, Isaac, and last but not least, have a nice day story. Last month, a routine bus ride to Hancock Middle School

Starting point is 00:30:19 in Killed Mississippi turned extremely dangerous. After bus driver Leah Taylor passed out behind the wheel, five students leapt into action. Jackson Kasne grabbed the steering wheel as the bus veered off course, while Darius Clark hit the air brakes. So forcefully, it nearly threw him through the windshield. Kaylee Clark called 911,

Starting point is 00:30:38 and Destiny Cornelius spotted the driver's medication in her hand and administered it as McKenzie Fitch helped keep everyone calm. I'm very proud of them, Taylor said afterward. I couldn't ask for any other students than my students on the bus. I'm going to think of how they saved my life. WLOX in Biloxi, Mississippi has this story, and there's a link in today's episode description. All right, everybody, that is it for today's episode.

Starting point is 00:31:02 As always, if you'd like to support our work, please go to retangle.com, where you can sign up for a newsletter membership, podcast membership, or a bundled membership that gets you a discount on both. We'll be right back here tomorrow. For Isaac and the rest of the crew, this is John Law signing off.

Starting point is 00:31:16 Have a great day, y'all. Peace. Our executive editor and founder is me. Isaac Saul, and our executive producer is John Wall. Today's episode was edited in Endangel. engineered by Dewey Thomas. Our editorial staff is led by managing editor Ari Weitzman with senior editor Will Kayback and associate editors Audrey Moorhead, Lindsay Canuth, and Bailey Saul. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. To learn more about Tangle and to sign up for a membership,

Starting point is 00:31:44 please visit our website at retangle.com.

Tangle - Spirit Airlines shuts down.

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