NewsHK
The wave of airline distress that has moved through the US carrier sector has now produced a dispute that reaches beyond gates, slots, and aircraft into the less-charted territory of operational data ownership.
Spirit Airlines' bankruptcy estate sold a substantial dataset to Google through auction proceedings, and the transaction has alarmed Doug Kreuzkamp, who founded the airline operations platform Springshot in 2011 and says a significant share of what was auctioned belongs to his company, not to Spirit.
Kreuzkamp told reporters he learned about the sale from news coverage rather than from any notice issued by Spirit or its estate.
Springshot's platform, which hundreds of airports use globally, powered Spirit's technology stack for the last three years, right up to what Kreuzkamp called the "very last flight." His position is that a substantial portion of the data and intellectual property bundled into the auction was generated by Springshot's proprietary system and was never Spirit's to transfer.
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