This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Nicole Liel, a 28-year-old social media content creator from Singapore. It has been edited for length and clarity.
The last leg of my first US trip was derailed by the Spirit Airlines shutdown.
I wanted to tick America off my checklist and visit as many cities as possible while I was there, so I went west to east. I wanted to go to Coachella to see Justin Bieber, Sabrina Carpenter, and Katseye perform.
My husband and I flew into San Francisco, went to Palm Springs for the Coachella weekend, and are flying out of New York City on Monday.
Some highlights of my trip include cycling straight through the Tenderloin in San Francisco, eating the worst Singaporean food of my entire life in Los Angeles, and being part of the audience for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!”
But our trip to Chicago made me feel like we were a part of American history.
Read more about Spirit’s bankruptcy
Going to the wrong Chicago
Nicole Liel
My game plan in NYC was just to watch Broadway shows. I told my husband I wanted to watch the play “Chicago,” but he bought tickets to visit the city of Chicago instead, getting return tickets for both of us for about $200 combined.
So we went on a two-day trip with Spirit Airlines on May 1, and there was no problem, except for a lot of turbulence.
We enjoyed Chicago, had some deep-dish pizza, and watched Demi Lovato’s show.
That night, I completed my online check-in and received my boarding pass for the Spirit Airlines return flight NK107 to Newark Liberty International Airport.
Return flight to NYC canceled
But on our way to the airport on Saturday, I got an email that the flight was canceled.
I thought it was just that one flight, but when my husband Googled Spirit Airlines, he found article after article about the airline shutting down.
We didn’t have a hotel booked for that night in Chicago, so we really needed to get back.
I also didn’t want to be in Chicago; I wanted to watch “Chicago” — the play.
We ended up buying American Airlines tickets back to NYC for about $300 each and arrived about four hours later than planned. We’re yet to get our Spirit refunds.
I spent the extra time at O’Hare airport in a daze, buying a Kylie Cosmetics lip kit from a vending machine out of impulse.
It didn’t feel like a waste of time
I don’t think of it as time wasted. When life throws these kinds of problems at me when I’m traveling, I treat it like a tourist experience.
I travel quite a lot, and the odds are that I’ll experience something similar. And I don’t look at it like, “Oh my God, screw this, why is it happening to me, I’m so unlucky?”
We see it as a monumental moment because we flew on the last few Spirit flights. We experienced an entire airline carrier shut down within 24 hours of sitting on its plane, and that’s a story to tell. It feels like we are part of American history.
We made good use of our time in NYC. I managed to see “Chicago” the play and even got to take a selfie with Whitney Leavitt. In the time I have left, I’m going to go to Sephora to buy Rhode products and get a Chick-fil-A cookies-and-cream milkshake one last time.
I’ve ticked many items off my bucket list and have many stories to tell from my month in the US.
