Last Yellow Wing Tour leg 10

LEG 10 — FORT LAUDERDALE (KMZJ → KFLL) Marana → Fort Lauderdale Mission: Return to Spirit's former South Florida stronghold for one of the final retrievals of the tour.

📖 Where Spirit Lived Fort Lauderdale feels different.

This wasn't simply another station.

South Florida was deeply intertwined with Spirit's identity.

Now yellow airplanes sit silently on the ramp.

The terminal remains busy with other airlines, but Spirit's operation has vanished.

The scale of the collapse is staggering.

When operations stopped, more than 90 Spirit aircraft were left at airports around the country.

Behind each aircraft were crews.

Pilots.

Flight attendants.

Mechanics.

Dispatchers.

Gate agents.

Ramp workers.

Schedulers.

Office employees.

Thousands of people whose lives had been connected to the airline.

That is why Nomadic's Bob Allen described the operation as deeply sad on a human level despite it being their business to move aircraft when airlines restructure or fail.

Some former Spirit pilots nevertheless found themselves with one unusual final opportunity.

They could fly their airplane one more time.

Not for Spirit.

But away from it.