Spirit Airlines seeks to sell massive data archive amid bankruptcy

As part of its bankruptcy proceedings in a New York court, Spirit Airlines is seeking to sell a massive data package that has attracted significant interest from technology and artificial intelligence companies. The dataset includes 97.5 million passenger records collected since 1992, 13.7 million active email addresses, and details regarding loyalty programs.

Beyond passenger information, the sale includes sensitive internal data: personal files for over 175,000 employees and approximately 1.5 million internal communications from platforms such as email and Microsoft Teams. These records are considered highly valuable for training artificial intelligence models.

Two major bids have been submitted for the package: Google has offered $10 million, while the AI startup Micro1 has proposed $12.5 million. While legal experts note that such sales represent a growing commercial trend where digital data is treated as a liquid asset during insolvency, concerns have been raised regarding privacy risks, including identity theft, phishing, and the exposure of sensitive employee information.