A founder finds out from the news

Doug Kreuzkamp learned from press reports that Google had won an auction for a huge pile of Spirit Airlines operational data. Nobody had called him first.

His software ran the airline

Kreuzkamp founded Springshot in 2011. Its platform helps airlines and airports fix logistics problems fast and keep flights on time. Hundreds of airports use it.

Coupled right up to the last flight

Springshot powered Spirit's tech stack for three years, through the airline's final flight. Kreuzkamp says he engaged with Spirit every single day before it shut down.

“We were very tightly coupled with them, did a lot of great work helping that airline.”

Nobody said what was in the box

Springshot's court objection argues the sale agreement never spells out which data is actually being sold. It gestures at categories instead of listing assets.

Vague categories swallow everything

The agreement covers "productivity and collaboration data," "core business systems and business application data," and "workflow and process data." Springshot's work sits inside all three.

“This expansive definition does nothing to differentiate between Springshot's intellectual property... and Spirit data that it actually owns and has the capacity to sell.”

Pump the brakes

Springshot asked the court to pause the sale until a forensic process proves that none of what Google is buying belongs to third parties.

Possession is not ownership

Approving the sale as written would bless an unauthorized transfer of trade secrets, Springshot warns, and set a template for moving startup IP to the biggest companies through bankruptcy court.

“Bankruptcy cannot become the new land grab for AI. The possession of IP is not ownership.”

Google says almost nothing

Google's spokesperson declined to address the objections and repeated an earlier line: the dataset can improve its products and AI models, and it contains no personal information.

“We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models.”

Engine makers pile on

International Aero Engines filed its own objection, saying the dataset may hold its proprietary commercial, technical, and financial information. Confidentiality clauses in Spirit contracts were simply skipped.

Resale is the second wound

Both vendors say they face irreparable harm twice over: once when Google takes the data, again if Google or anyone downstream passes it to a third party.

Google is building the rival

A week before the auction, Ryanair signed a five-year deal to feed operational data into Gemini Enterprise tools. That is exactly the job Springshot did for Spirit.

“Springshot's data may be among the most AI-relevant assets to be purchased.”

Fifteen years, gone

If Google ingests the data, Springshot says it forfeits the value of technology it spent 15 years building, while facing a competitor armed with its own work.

“That existential threat is only amplified by the fact that Google has recently announced its desire to operationalize its own AI platform for airline operations.”

A first for bankruptcy court

EFF's Adam Schwartz says this is the first highly public fight over selling amassed personal data in bankruptcy, and the first he knows of where a company is selling its employees' data rather than customers'.

Courts know how to sell planes

A bill of sale proves who owns an airplane. Digital assets have no equivalent, and Kreuzkamp says notice rules do not exist to let vendors show up and carve their IP out.

“If they spent 15 years building IP, that IP should not be misappropriated because their customer went bankrupt.”

Segregation guts the price

Vendors want proprietary data pulled out first, including data tangled in Spirit employees' emails and chats. But Google's agreement demands the assets arrive intact, so carving anything out shrinks the deal's worth.

80,000 inboxes, no consent

Schwartz counts 80,000 email accounts, 100 million emails, 20 million SharePoint documents, and 500 million Teams messages. Only customer data had to be de-identified, not workers'.

“It is the Spirit Airline employees themselves who should be making the decision whether they want to bear the risk to their privacy.”

Pilots warn about safety

Flight safety depends on pilots filing candid incident reports. The Air Line Pilots Association says re-identification would chill that reporting across the industry and make flying more dangerous.

“Disclosure of confidential flight operations data through the Sale Agreement can be expected to chill voluntary compliance by pilots across the industry.”

A late bid that solves less than it claims

AI lab Micro1 outbid Google by 25 percent with $12.5 million, but wants to de-identify in-house, which debtors already rejected. It never promises to segregate Springshot's IP, only not to compete with it.

“Once you throw data into an AI model, it's impossible to trace what the model did with that.”