Google to Buy Spirit Airlines Data for $10 Million to Help Train AI Models

Did you ever fly on Spirit Airlines? Or work there? Or send an email to someone who worked there? Then your information will soon be feeding Google’s artificial intelligence model.

The discount airline halted all operations in May, and it has been selling off its remaining assets through the bankruptcy process ever since. While most of those assets are planes, equipment and real estate, other company data is valuable, too.

It was disclosed late Monday that Spirit agreed to sell its data to Google for $10 million. The data includes emails and internal communications, spreadsheets, transactions with the public including bookings and frequent flyer information, as well as human resources information on employees.

The data has been stripped of anything that would allow individuals to be identified, according to a court filing. But it is still a massive amount of useful intelligence.

“We acquired part of an enterprise dataset from Spirit Airlines, which can be helpful in improving our products and AI models,” a Google spokesperson said in a statement, adding that Google will not receive any personal information as part of the purchase.

Numerous airlines have said they are making increasing use of AI to set fares and schedule more efficiently.

Another AI company, Mercor, had the second-highest bid of $7.5 million for Spirit’s data. Bankruptcy Court Judge Sean Lane is due to rule on the sale of the data at a hearing Wednesday.

The sale is unusual, even if airline bankruptcies are not. Most bankrupt airlines are purchased whole, including their data, by another airline that folds it into its operations.

But Spirit was the first significant U.S. airline in 25 years that was forced to halt operations entirely rather than be sold to another airline.