An online campaign proposing a community‑owned revival of Spirit Airlines temporarily paused new pledges after a surge of activity overwhelmed its website, organizers say.

According to information posted on the site, technical systems crashed amid a high volume of submissions, limiting the group’s ability to verify pledges. Organizers say email verification messages were flagged as spam, creating a backlog and forcing a pause while fixes are made.

As of the outage, organizers reported more than 140,000 pledges representing about $88 million in unverified commitments. The group says no money has been collected, and all pledges are nonbinding.

The effort emerged after Spirit Airlines abruptly ceased operations at 3 a.m. on May 2, grounding flights nationwide and leaving millions of passengers without service.

The proposal outlines a cooperative ownership concept for a potential relaunch, drawing comparisons to other publicly or member‑owned organizations, including the Green Bay Packers, which are owned by hundreds of thousands of shareholders, as well as cooperatives such as REI and Ocean Spray. Organizers say the model is meant to prioritize community control rather than private equity ownership.

Organizers stress the concept remains a proposal only and would require extensive legal, regulatory and aviation approvals before any airline could resume operations.

The website remains partially offline as technical issues are addressed.