PULLS

A MAJOR US airline has announced it will no longer conduct flight operations out of one of the country’s busiest airports.

Budget-friendly Spirit Airlines announced in late September that it will cease service in a midwestern city as part of the company’s restructuring effort to prioritize stronger markets.

Beginning on December 1, Spirit Airlines will no longer serve passengers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport.

The budget-friendly airline has been struggling financially following its second bankruptcy filing during the summer.

“We apologize to our guests for any inconvenience and will reach out to those with affected reservations to issue a refund,” the company said in a statement at the time.

Minneapolis is among several cities where Spirit Airlines will exit.

Impacted cities include Macon, Georgia, Albuquerque, New Mexico, Birmingham, Alabama, Boise, Idaho, Chattanooga, Tennessee, Columbia, South Carolina, Portland, Oregon, Salt Lake City, Utah, and four cities in California, Oakland, Sacramento, San Diego, and San Jose.

Around the same time, Spirit Airlines confirmed that it would be laying off around one-third of its flight attendants, according to CBS News.

Then, on October 31, Hartford, Connecticut became the latest city Spirit Airlines ceased to conduct service in.

Spirit cut its services out of Bradley International Airport, calling the continued halts to its services “very difficult.”

‘INEXPLICABLE DECISION’

However, Spirit is not the only airline facing financial woes, Avelo Airlines also announced it would stop services at Bradley International Airport.

The airline cited financial struggles as the main reason for leaving the Hartford airport.

However, officials disagreed with the decision as leaving the airport also removes the only direct flight to Montego Bay, Jamaica, from Connecticut.

“The CAA is especially disappointed on behalf of the community, which has fought so hard to secure nonstop service to Jamaica over recent years,” the Connecticut Airport Authority stated.

“The decision to cancel the MBJ route is inexplicable, given the strong ridership, subsidies received, significant airport incentives, and community support.”

It’s awards season crunch time, in the sense that I’m crunching in as much work as I can before a Thanksgiving respite — including a guide to some of the highlights from this week’s issue of The Envelope, covered by my profile of Renate Reinsve.

Whether it’s while you smell turkey legs being turned into gravy (i.e., if you’re me as I write this) or as you’re lounging around over the holiday weekend, I hope you’ll dive into the great stories below. And be sure to take a breather from the mayhem in the process. It’s a marathon, not a sprint!

Digital Cover: Ethan Hawke

(Victoria Will / For The Times)

In the years since the Golden Age of TV, it’s not been uncommon for actors to vie for major awards on both the big and small screens at once. But few in recent memory have done so in such distinct projects as Ethan Hawke in “Blue Moon” and “The Lowdown”: One is a chamber drama about the last days of legendary songwriter Lorenz Hart, the other a noirish tale of a hangdog journalist.

It’s a reflection of the actor’s voracious appetite for the unexpected (see also: “Black Phone 2”), which he reveals that some in Hollywood once found “irritating.”

“Generally, people are more comfortable when they know exactly what you are and what your thing is, and if you keep changing your thing it’s confusing,” he tells writer Emily Zemler. “But it’s always been interesting to me to do different things. It makes acting really exciting to me to keep shaking it up. Each thing has its own geometry and math, and that keeps you really engaged.”

Eva Victor on ‘Sorry, Baby’

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

One of my favorite films of the year, “Sorry, Baby” works on many levels — as a campus satire, a portrait of a friendship, a slice of small-town life. And as writer-director-star Eva Victor writes in a new essay on the film, it took all of those other levels to make the film’s deepest, darkest level possible.

“There was a time in my life when I was looking for a film about going through a trauma that held my hand while I was watching it,” Victor notes, contrasting “Sorry, Baby” with films that depict similar subjects with violent imagery. “I needed the film to care for me, the person who’d been through the difficult thing. I didn’t need a film that existed to teach people how bad it is to go through a bad thing, I needed a film that existed to make me feel less alone.”

How ‘F1’ became a part of F1

As an avowed fan of Formula One, from docuseries “Drive to Survive” to scripted miniseries “Senna,” what fascinated me most watching Apple TV’s summer blockbuster “F1” was the delicate logistical dance it must’ve required to shoot a major theatrical film at actual races on the actual F1 circuit. Maybe that’s my stressed-out editor brain at work, but I asked Nate Rogers to dig into the question.

He reports back that even with legendary racer Lewis Hamilton and Apple on board, the film had to prove “that they could set up at an event like the fabled British Grand Prix at Silverstone and not cause a pileup.”

“We had to rehearse the blocking and staging for about two weeks with a stopwatch … to prove to them that we could actually shoot a scene and get off the track before the race started,” director Joseph Kosinski tells Rogers.

I can recognize a tough deadline when I see one.

Additional highlights from our Nov. 25 issue

Edwards’ position at Middlesbrough, given his current employment, would provide some obstacles, with Boro believed to be entitled to a significant compensation fee.

Edwards is a former Wolves Under-23 coach and was also first-team coach, having had a two-game interim spell in charge in 2016, and distanced himself from the role.

“I was told by my daughter yesterday [Sunday], so that probably tells you where I stand on it,” he said.

“You know my links to the club but my full focus is on this job here, which is a brilliant job, and trying to turn things around from the weekend in a really big game against Leicester.

“Speculation stuff is hard for me to comment about, anything else other than Middlesbrough, which is where my focus is, that we’ve done a decent job so far.”

Wolves have a history of appointing managers with close links to high-profile agent Jorge Mendes, in Nuno Espirito Santo, Bruno Lage and Pereira.

It is understood that in addition to O’Neil, Wolves were speaking to at least one manager from Mendes’ stable.

O’Neil was sacked by Wolves in December 2024 following a disappointing start to the 2024-25 campaign, failing to win in their opening 10 games.