Spirit Airlines sells its data to Google for $10 million

Have you ever flown on Spirit Airlines? Or maybe you are a former employee, or you sent an email to an employee of the company? So, your data will soon be used to feed Google's AI model.

The low-cost airline halted all operations in May and has since proceeded to sell its remaining assets as part of bankruptcy proceedings.

Most of these assets include aircraft, equipment and real estate, but there are other assets that are also considered valuable.

It was revealed on Monday that the company had agreed to sell its data to the search engine Google for $10 million.

This data includes emails, internal correspondence, spreadsheets, records of transactions with customers (including reservations and frequent flyer information), as well as human resources data on employees.

The data has been purged of any information that might identify individuals, according to documents submitted to the court, but it still represents a huge amount of valuable and useful information.

A Google spokesperson said in a statement to CNN: “We have obtained part of a corporate data set belonging to Spirit Airlines, which is data that can help improve our products and our artificial intelligence models,” stressing that the company will not receive any personal information as part of the purchase process.

Many airlines have stated that they are expanding the use of artificial intelligence to determine ticket prices and organize schedules more efficiently.

It is worth noting that another company specializing in artificial intelligence, Mercor.io, submitted the second highest bid to purchase Spirit's lines data, at a value of $7.5 million.

Bankruptcy Court Judge Shawn Lin is scheduled to issue a ruling on the data sale during a hearing to be held on Wednesday.

This sale process is considered unusual, although airline bankruptcies are common.

Completely bankrupt airlines, along with their data, are usually purchased by another airline that integrates them into its operations.

But Spirit was the first major US airline to be forced to completely cease operations in 25 years, rather than sell it to another airline.