Spirit Airlines Asset Sale: Employee Emails on the Line
Following Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy, the court is selling off the airline's assets. Among the usual lots like aircraft and routes, an atypical one appeared: a massive corporate data archive. The winner of the auction, held virtually on August 14, was Google. The company will pay $10 million and additionally cover the expenses of an independent third party that will prepare the data for transfer. For comparison: Google's starting bid was $5 million.
The purchase does not include customer data or passengers' personal information. However, Google will receive virtually all of the carrier's HR and employment documentation: about 100 million emails, HR information, salary details, as well as data on employee behavior, activity, and productivity accumulated over decades. Along with this, the archive includes computer programs, applications, and Spirit's source code.
Flight Attendants' Union Demands Revised Terms
Google agreed to a set of formal restrictions. A court-appointed ombudsman will oversee the removal of personally identifiable information (PII) before the data is transferred to the new owner. Google itself committed to storing the information in a de-identified form and to "never intentionally re-identify" it. If third parties gain access to the data, they will be required to comply with similar conditions.
Current and former flight attendants were not convinced by these guarantees. The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA), which represents Spirit workers, filed a limited objection in court. The union is not seeking to block the deal but points to a serious legal flaw: the company relies on consumer protection laws, which do not extend to employee privacy. As the AFA states, privacy in this deal is "consumer-oriented," with the main burden falling disproportionately on staff.
Even removing names does not solve the content problem, the union argues. The archive retains disciplinary correspondence of flight attendants, records of crew training deficiencies, leave applications, requests for special working conditions, internal Teams communications, and salary change histories. All of this is sensitive information, even if anonymized. The AFA is also concerned that Google could combine the purchased archive with its other data sets and effectively link "cleaned" records to specific individuals.
Why Google Wants the Corporate Archive of a Bankrupt Airline
A Google representative explained that the company purchased part of Spirit's corporate data set to improve its own products and AI models. Google assures that the buyer will not receive personal information and that all data will be thoroughly cleaned before transfer.
The auction terms did indeed cut off those seeking more sensitive data. Competitor bids were rejected if they requested additional consumer data or offered to transfer PII. Google's main rival was Mercor Corporation, which wanted to clean the data itself rather than through a third party; its proposals were ultimately rejected. Mercor's $7.5 million bid remained as a backup in case the deal with Google fell through.
Lawyers and advocates are alarmed by the very principle of such a sale. EFF's Director of Privacy Litigation, Adam Schwartz, notes that the organization opposes using a person's data for a new purpose without their consent. This is precisely what happens when a bankrupt company sells employee emails to turn them into training data for AI.
The AFA's objection is currently limited in scope, but it highlights the main conflict: de-identification only protects against direct linkage to a name, not against analysis of the content. The fate of years of Spirit employees' correspondence now depends on how strictly Google adheres to its own promises and whether additional union demands emerge in the case.
