Airline avoided bankruptcy but is now left without a CEO

Ted Christie has stepped down from his role at Spirit Airlines on April 7.

Apr 8, 2025 - 17:02

Airline avoided bankruptcy but is now left without a CEO

After filing for Chapter 11 protection in November 2024, the struggling Spirit Airlines (SAVE) has said that it would emerge from bankruptcy by converting $795 million of debt into equity and ultimately going private.

"We will emerge as a stronger airline with the financial flexibility to continue providing guests with enhanced travel experiences and greater value," chief executive Ted Christie said when news of the restructuring was broken two months later in February.

Don't miss the move: SIGN UP for TheStreet's FREE Daily news

'We wish him the best going forward': Spirit CEO Ted Christie has stepped down

But as the airline prepares to craft a new course in which it scraps its rock-bottom fare model and tries to sell travelers more premium offerings, Christie will not be the one to lead it through. on April 7, Spirit shared that both he and Chief Commercial Officer Matt Klein have stepped down from their roles.

While Chief Transformation Officer Rana Ghosh has been named to replace Klein, Christie will not have an immediate successor.

An interim team of current Chief Financial Officer Fred Cromer, Chief Operating Officer John Bendoraitis and Senior Vice President and General Counsel Thomas Canfield will split the role until a permanent replacement is found.

The resignation came very suddenly as the airline was, on March 22, still reassuring investors that "Spirit will continue to be led by Ted Christie".

Beyond standard wishes thanking Christie for his time with the airline (he has been at Spirit since 2012 and in the CEO role since 2019), Spirit's board has not commented on the reasons for the sudden turnaround.

Ted Christie has served as chief executive of Spirit Airlines since 2019.
TheStreet Illustration

"[Christie] has seen a lot and done a lot during his tenure here, including navigating the Company through the COVID crisis and multiple strategic junctures, as well as most recently, a corporate restructuring," Spirit Chairman Robert Milton said in a statement. "Ted has kept the company together through challenging times, and for this we wish him all the best going forward."

Milton also thanked Klein for his "many contributions since arriving in 2016." Neither Christie nor Klein have issued statements on their departures.

Why has Christie stepped down?

At the time of filing for bankruptcy, Spirit was more than $3.8 billion in debt and struggling to make interest payments. As part of its restructuring, Spirit also received $350 million in equity from existing investors to continue operations.

When Christie positioned the bankruptcy as a way to way to “provide increased financial flexibility" and "position Spirit for long-term success", investors feeling burned immediately called out the hefty bonuses to five of its top executives that were disclosed in the bankruptcy filings — $3 million for Christie and $850,000 for John Bendoraitis who is staying on and stepping up into the interim leadership team.

More on travel:

"This gross enrichment of the very people responsible for Spirit's financial collapse has come directly at the expense of shareholders who trusted the company with their life savings," an anonymous donor wrote in a letter addressed to Judge Sean Lane of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York.