Buying data from a bankrupt company: what the Spirit Airlines sale shows

What is being sold in the Spirit Airlines case?

Spirit stopped flying on 2 May 2026. Its assets are being sold in bankruptcy.

PYMNTS reported that Google paid $10 million at auction for the airline’s internal records. Citing a court notice, it said the package included roughly 100 million employee emails, 500 million Microsoft Teams messages, more than 17 million OneDrive files, more than 20 million SharePoint items and 516 code repositories. Google started the bidding at $5 million and beat a $7.5 million offer from Mercor, which was named backup buyer.

PYMNTS also made the point that matters for every buyer. It wrote that corporate email archives and chat logs have historically had almost no resale value once a company failed.

The sale is not final. TNW reported that a hearing is scheduled for 14 October and that the court has the final say.

Why is there a privacy ombudsman in a bankruptcy sale?

US bankruptcy law has a rule for personal data. Under section 363 of the Bankruptcy Code, when a company told individuals that it would not transfer their personally identifiable information to outside parties, the trustee may not sell that information unless set conditions are met. In practice the court appoints a consumer privacy ombudsman to review the sale.

In the Spirit case the ombudsman filed her report on 5 October, TNW said, and recommended approval. Her finding was narrow. TNW quoted the report: “The potential privacy losses or costs to consumers have been eliminated or mitigated.” The word to notice is consumers.

What conditions came with the data?

The deal changed before it reached the judge. According to TNW:

• Spirit and Google agreed to exclude booking and transaction records, refunds, inflight purchases and WiFi sales.
• The sale still includes corporate email, which may hold passengers’ personal details.
• Spirit hired an outside company, Tonic.ai, to de-identify that material. It must file a certification with the court before every transfer.
• The buyer must publicly commit not to try to re-identify the data. It may not pass the data on unless the recipient makes the same commitment.

Each of these is a term a buyer can ask for in any data deal, inside or outside a court: an independent party does the de-identification, there is proof before each transfer, and the promise travels with the data.

Who can still object?

The ombudsman’s review covered consumers. TNW reported that she did not assess whether the sale poses risks to Spirit’s employees or third parties.

Employees have objected. The Association of Flight Attendants-CWA wrote that de-identification addresses whether a record can be traced to a named person, but not whether the contents are confidential. It also noted that the sale agreement requires the de-identification to preserve “referential integrity across the data set”, which means the links between records stay in place.

Lawmakers followed. The Record reported that 121 federal lawmakers sent a letter asking the companies to halt the deal. The letter said: “Removing names, email addresses, or other direct identifiers does not necessarily make a dataset anonymous.”

Google’s answer, quoted by The Record, is that it is not looking to buy any personal information, and that the information will either be completely excluded or de-identified by an independent third party before Google receives any data.

What should a buyer take from this?

Five points, none of them about price:

1. Scope first. Take out what you do not need before anyone has to argue about it.
2. Consumers are not the only people in the data. Employees, suppliers and partners are in it too, and a consumer review does not cover them.
3. Use an independent party to de-identify. Ask for proof with each delivery.
4. Write down what you will not do. No re-identification, and the same promise from anyone you pass data to.
5. Expect the deal to be public. A court sale is read by unions, lawmakers and the press.

A going business that licenses a copy of its own records is a simpler case, because the owner is there to answer questions and decide what stays out. On Korra, that owner describes the data, and you ask your questions before any offer. How buying works shows each step.