BROWARD COUNTY, Fla, — Andrea Strausberg and Jason Stroh spent a combined 10 years working as flight attendants for Spirit Airlines.
“I think it is a blessing in disguise,” Stroh said.
The surprise shutdown of the airline Saturday may have derailed the couple’s careers, but not their spirit.
“We’re gonna come up from this -- just a little stepping stone to get where we need to get,” Strausberg said.
That next step is a new passion project centered around pets.
“We do dog grooming, boarding, doggie daycare,” Stroh said.
The couple now runs Sunnyside Pups, using skills they said they learned while working in the airline industry.
“The compassion, empathy and patience above all and we use it every single day in our business and with the fur babies that we look after, so I’m very grateful for everything I learned from Spirit,” Strausberg said.
“Working at Spirit is kind of like the school of hard knocks in the service industry, so it’s definitely -- we’re polished in that regard,” Stroh added.
“This is plan A,” Stroh said. “A lot of flight attendants -- it’s hard to stay out of the industry. They go from one to the other. I don’t see that in our cards anytime soon.”
Roughly 5,000 other people across the state, most of them in South Florida, are now scrambling to find work.
A job fair planned Thursday at Miami International Airport in Concourse J could help some of those former Spirit employees.
“I wanted to retire here, I loved this job,” said flight attendant Dante Taylor.
But Taylor said he needed the health insurance from his job, which stopped in the middle of his treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma.
“What are we supposed to do?” Taylor said. “When coverage from Marketplace, even though it’s backdated, it’s not effective until June 1. We need coverage now.”
The fallout also includes Spirit’s new $250 million headquarters in Dania Beach.
Broward County’s mayor is now floating the idea of turning the vacant property into a new county administration building.
But no matter what happens with Spirit, the married couple said they are focused on flying high with their new dog grooming business.
“I applied to Delta and I was gonna move forward with the interview, but I decided I want to pursue this instead,” Strausberg said.
Copyright 2026 by WPLG Local10.com - All rights reserved.
