CNN

By Alaa Elassar, Gloria Pazmino, CNN

(CNN) — Terminal A at LaGuardia Airport sat unusually quiet Saturday morning — no lines at the counters, no Spirit Airlines staff anywhere, just a sheet of paper taped over a cardboard sign.

“We regret to inform you that Spirit Airlines has ceased global operations,” read the sign in Terminal A, where Spirit operated in New York City for years. “All Spirit flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available.”

Above it, a departures board flickered with a string of red notices: nine Spirit flights bound for cities across Texas, Florida, Detroit, North Carolina and South Carolina — all marked simply, “cancelled.”

Saturday’s shutdown of Spirit — the pioneering budget airline that reshaped low-cost travel — has stranded thousands of passengers nationwide. The company canceled all flights, halted customer service and told travelers not to come to the airport. Customers are being issued refunds and instructed to rebook with other airlines.

Spirit’s collapse marks the first time in 25 years a major US airline has gone out of business due to financial trouble. The company, in its second bankruptcy, had been struggling for years and failed to secure a last-minute rescue deal, forcing it into an immediate wind-down after 34 years in operation.

As of 7 a.m. Saturday, a handful of passengers were still arriving at LaGuardia Airport’s Terminal A, where the confusion stretched from urgent family trips to long-planned getaways as more travelers arrived to find their plans unraveling in real time.

One woman and her elderly mother told CNN they had a flight to Charlotte for a family funeral and had not received notifications about their canceled flights.

Alexandra Merino, who had been planning a trip to Florida for Mother’s Day, told CNN from outside of LaGuardia Airport that she did not realize what was going on until she arrived.

“I just got here, and the people that were standing here just said, ‘there’s no flights, Spirit went out of business,’” Merino said, adding she hadn’t checked her email and didn’t know if any notice had come overnight. “We’re trying to get Expedia to book a new flight … Happy Mother’s Day to me.”

Nearby, another traveler caught off guard said he only realized what had happened after getting to the airport for a flight to Orlando, where he was supposed to attend his Master of Business Administration graduation ceremony.

“This is wild,” Danny Nunez told CNN, explaining that everything appeared normal when he checked his flight the night before. At a kiosk, he was told his flight had been canceled and to see an agent — but there were none. “(I’ll) try to find a way to hopefully make my school ceremony this afternoon, at two,” he said. “I’ll probably head back into the office right now and see what I can figure out.”

Emergency relief rolls out for passengers and employees

Amid the confus

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By Brian Stelter, CNN

(CNN) — In the immediate aftermath of last week’s shooting outside the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, there was widespread skepticism about rescheduling it anytime soon.

But attitudes have shifted in recent days, and the consensus is now that the dinner — which doubles as an awards ceremony and fundraiser — should be hosted again on principle, several White House correspondents told CNN.

The White House Correspondents’ Association board is “working through options” for a “rescheduled event,” this year’s president of the association, Weijia Jiang of CBS News, told members on Friday.

“As of today, we have not made any decisions,” she wrote in a memo obtained by CNN. “However, I am committed to ensuring our scholars and award winners receive the recognition that is rightfully theirs, and that an attack on free speech does not cancel our annual celebration of free speech and the other freedoms protected by the First Amendment.”

Numerous journalism organizations have reached out to Jiang to offer assistance.

The April 25 shooting incident forced organizers to postpone the annual dinner, a black-tie affair attended by nearly 3,000 journalists, politicians, corporate executives and others.

The next day, journalists privately expressed doubts about whether a redo could or should happen.

But President Donald Trump initially said, “We’ll do it again within the next 30 days.”

He added, on last Sunday’s “60 Minutes,” “It’s not that I wanna go… I’m very busy. I don’t need that. I think it’s very important that they do it again.”

People involved in the planning discussions said the 30-day timetable is not considered realistic. But the WHCA board is planning a follow-up event within the next 60 days.

The case for and against a redo

The obstacles to a redo are considerable, starting with the obvious security concerns.

Any new event will likely be somewhat smaller. Some of the attendees at last Saturday’s dinner have ruled out attending another, in part due to the trauma of the first.

But others have argued the opposite. Fox News anchor John Roberts, himself a former White House correspondent, said earlier this week that for journalists “who don’t want to go to a dinner because they’re left a little traumatized by what happened on Saturday, it’s like, get some steel in your spine! Because journalists around the world die in the pursuit of press freedom.”

A source familiar with the planning pointed to this year’s celebrations around the US semiquincentennial and argued that it is especially important now to show resilience.

Jiang’s term as WHCA president ends on July 15. Jacqui Heinrich of Fox News is next in line for the position.

In Friday’s memo, Jiang said to her fellow correspondents, “Your resilience and resolve to inform the public under awful conditions continues to inspire me. And even though the night unfolded differently than planned, it ended the way it was supposed to: with nearly 3,000 dinner guests going home to their loved ones. We are grateful to the law enforcement officers that made that happen.”

How the night unraveled

The annual dinner garnered extra attention this year because Trump attended for the first time as president, ending a years-long boycott that reflected his often hostile relationship with the press corps.

Jiang hoped the event “would restore some normalcy between the Trump administration and the press.”

“Maybe I was naïve, but I wanted it to be a room we don’t see enough of in Washington: a bipartisan one. And it was,” she wrote in an essay afterward.

But the evening was derailed when a gunman sprinted toward a security checkpoint outside the Washington Hilton ballroom, where the dinner was just underway.

Officers opened fire and the suspect, C

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