Spirit Airlines hopes to emerge from its just-filed bankruptcy by the spring of 2025, but it needs people to run the company until then. That’s part of why CEO Ted Christie got a $3.8 million bonus just under a week before the carrier filed for insolvency.

“On November 12, 2024, the Board of Directors of Spirit approved the payment of one-time cash retention awards (“Retention Awards”) to Spirit’s named executive officers,” the company said in the Securities and Exchange Commission filing where it announced its entrance to Chapter 11 proceedings.

The amount is smaller than the $6.6 million Christie got in total compensation for 2023 according to its most recent annual proxy statement (padded by $1.8 million in separate retention bonuses he got after Spirit bailed on a merger with Frontier Airlines (ULCC) for its failed tie-up with JetBlue Airways (JBLU)) but greater than the $3.4 million in total compensation he got in 2022.

Christie isn’t the only person at the budget carrier, America’s seventh-largest airline, getting a check to stick around. Spirit also paid retention bonuses to CFO Fred Cromer ($175,000), chief operating officer John Bendoraitis ($850,000), chief commercial officer Matthew Klein ($250,000), and chief information officer Rocky Wiggins ($300,000).

The money comes with strings attached, though. If the executives leave the company within a year, then they have to repay their bonuses — within 10 days of their departure. The funds might prove a bit of solace given that the group owns a collective 407,000 or so Spirit Airlines shares that are effectively worth nothing now that the carrier’s stock has been delisted by the New York Stock Exchange.

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