Aug 18 - A U.S. bankruptcy court on Tuesday moved the hearing to consider approval of the sale of internal business data from Spirit Airlines to Alphabet's Google to September 9. The hearing had been scheduled for Wednesday but was adjourned after the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA (AFA), which represents Spirit cabin crew, lodged an objection to the transaction.
The asset on offer consists of a wide range of Spirit internal records. According to filings, the package includes employee emails, Microsoft Teams messages, spreadsheets and calendars, together with marketing, productivity and operations data. Alphabet's Google has indicated its intention to use the purchased information for product development and to train its artificial intelligence models.
The AFA has asked the court to impose restrictions on the sale as it pertains to flight attendant employee data, and is seeking additional protections for employees if the sale is permitted to proceed. The union's objection highlights concerns about the treatment of employee information under the purchase agreement.
Spirit, in its filings, has said the records proposed for sale would be de-identified and would not include customer information or personally identifiable information. Nevertheless, the AFA pointed to a feature of the sale agreement that requires links across datasets to be preserved, saying that preservation of those links raises the possibility that information about individuals or small groups could be reconstructed despite de-identification.
The proposed data sale is taking place as Spirit works through bankruptcy procedures. The airline halted operations in May and entered a process of selling assets amid financial distress attributed in filings to high debt levels and elevated fuel costs.
With the hearing now set for September 9, the court will review the union's objection and the competing positions of the bidder and the debtor. The outcome will determine whether Google may proceed with its plan to acquire and use the de-identified internal datasets for its product and AI work, subject to any limitations the court may impose.
Next steps - The bankruptcy court will take up the matter on September 9, when it will consider the AFA's requested restrictions and weigh Spirit's assertion that the records are de-identified and devoid of customer or personally identifiable information.