Defunct low-cost carrier Spirit Airlines has been selling off its remaining assets through bankruptcy court after officially shutting down operations in May.
But in August, the airline began accepting proposals to sell off an unusual asset—not its aircraft or takeoff slots at an airport, but rather selling its decades of business data to a tech company. Current bidders include Google, which has offered $10 million, and AI company Micro1, with a bid of $12.5 million. Both companies would reportedly use the data to train AI models.
The potential sale is still awaiting final approval by the bankruptcy court in a hearing later in September. But it would see the winning tech company acquire “about 100 million emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams items, code and operational records,” according to Fortune.
The data includes employee information that would be de-identified by a court-approved third-party before being transferred to the highest bidder.
Worker advocacy groups are objecting to the potential sale of employee data. The Association of Flight Attendants CWA, the union that represents Spirit’s former cabin crew, has filed an objection to the sale.
“Outrageously, this information is proposed to include sensitive employee information, such as a wide variety of employment records, payroll records, emails,” and more, the union said in a statement.
The union also says that the proposed de-identification procedures don’t do enough to truly hide employees’ identities. Although the records would be altered so they couldn’t be traced to a named individual, the process doesn’t address whether the contents of the records are confidential.
Additionally, the sales documents say that the de-identified records must maintain “referential integrity across the data set.” The “union has significant concerns that it may be possible that information about identifiable individuals or small identifiable groups can still be reconstructed and determined,” AFA-CWA’s statement said.
Spirit Airlines aircraft. (Photo Credit: Spirit Airlines)
Unlike flight attendant data, passenger data is not directly on the auction block: customer profiles and loyalty information would be excluded from the sale. However, passenger information is still embedded in other systems that would be included in the sale and also must be de-identified.
Consumer advocates have similar concerns to the flight attendants union about the effectiveness of de-identifying traces of passenger information.
“The labor unions are right to be worried about Spirit's employee info, but consumers who have booked Spirit should be worried as well,” says William McGee, senior fellow for aviation and travel at the American Economic Liberties Project. “Simply put, what assurances do we have that 'de-identifying procedures' are effective? And how do we know that they will be followed? The simple answer is that we do not.”
According to filings in bankruptcy court, the Airline Pilots Association, Spirit’s pilots union, also has concerns about their members’ privacy. The union argued that pilots’ confidential information such as their medical records, fatigue reports, training records, flight safety program data, and more should not be included in the sale.
The court hearing at the end of the month will have strong repercussions for travelers and airline employees far beyond Spirit. The ruling will be one of the first precedents on how bankruptcy courts should treat employee and traveler data in the age of AI.
“Airlines have a long history of copying each other's worst policies and programs, so there's little doubt others will be following these developments with Spirit to see what is—and is not—allowed,” McGee says. “We should all hope such efforts are shut down.”
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