The flight operations of the US budget airline Spirit have been – to put it mildly – ​​unsettled for several weeks. The carrier has had to cancel thousands of flights for a variety of reasons and tens of thousands of passengers are stranded. This has now brought the US Department of Transportation into action. The authority has placed the carrier under special observation. The crux of the matter, according to the DOT to regional media, is that under US law, travelers have the right to alternative transport – even with another airline – in the event of a cancellation. But Spirit is said to have failed to grant this in thousands of cases. The service team, which normally takes care of exactly this kind of thing, is hopelessly overloaded. The result is that tens of thousands of passengers are stranded in various places and, contrary to applicable law, are not receiving rebookings or care services. Spirit boss Ted Christie downplayed the problem to USA Today and explained, among other things, that the airline is well on the way to “recovery”. Furthermore, the irregularities in air traffic, which reached their peak in July 2021, have already been significantly reduced. Nevertheless, Spirit had to cancel around 2.000 flights in the first week of August alone and thousands of passengers were affected again. The DOT transportation authority is not very impressed by the public statements and assurances that things are on the way to recovery and the justifications that the loss of pilots and flight attendants is very complex. The office is now placing Spirit under special supervision and wants to analyze and monitor the failures in detail. The focus is particularly on the fact that the low-cost airline