The Night My Airline Disappeared
From the Stella Polare Journal, May 6, 2026
National headlines triggered the magical memory of what happens when your plans and planes disappear overnight.
Spirit Airlines’ recent bankruptcy and shutdown stopped me in my tracks.
First and most importantly, my heart goes out to the Spirit employees, their families, and the travelers who were suddenly left scrambling. Airline collapses are never just business headlines. They are human stories. They ripple outward through missed connections, disrupted plans, lost paychecks, and people trying to make sense of what happens next.
And, as travel so often does, the news brought me back to a moment from my own journey.
One that began in Paris.
On February 3, 2012, I was living in the city during my business school study abroad program at ESSEC. It was the beginning of one of our two spring breaks — a very civilized concept that American universities should really consider adopting — and my flatmate, Leilani, and I were meant to fly to Budapest and Prague for the week.
Yes, the same Leilani from my Myanmar story. At this point, she has earned recurring-character status.
That evening, we were invited to a British pub crawl through the 5th Arrondissement, as one does when studying abroad in Paris. We set out from Le Marais, crossed the Seine, and stepped into what we assumed would be a festive, uncomplicated start to our holiday.
At the first pub, I was happily telling a group of fellow revelers about our grand plans when one of them asked, “How are you getting there? Malév Hungarian Airlines collapsed today.”
Excuse me?
Ever the optimist — or perhaps simply unwilling to let breaking aviation news interrupt a perfectly good evening in Paris — I shrugged it off. Surely everything would be fine.
It is important to remember that this was 2012. Smartphones existed, but they were not yet the constant extensions of our hands that they are today. I certainly was not paying for international data. My lifeline was a tiny French cell phone that required pressing the same button three times just to type one letter.
Très charmant? Oui.
Useful for crisis management? Absolutely not.
So, no, I could not simply pull up my reservation and assess the situation like a responsible adult. Nor, tragically, could I take pictures from that night.
Instead, we continued the pub crawl.
The evening unfolded from one pub to the next until we eventually abandoned our new friends for something a little more chic: a basement club on Avenue des Champs-Élysées, where we danced the night — and the very early morning — away.
Around 4:00 a.m., we finally emerged. Exhausted. Sweaty. Shivering in dresses and booties that were deeply committed to fashion and entirely unreasonable for early February.
I am much more fashion and function these days.
Then we saw it.
Paris was silent.
The streets were almost empty. Snow had begun to fall, softly blanketing the City of Light in white.
C’est magique.
We found a taxi and drove along Quai Voltaire, tracing the banks of the Seine as the city slept beneath fresh snow. It was one of those rare moments travel gives you when you are not looking for it. Quiet. Cinematic. Almost impossibly beautiful.
Beautiful enough, in fact, to make me briefly forget that our airline may or may not still exist.
When we finally made it back to our flat on Rue Vieille du Temple, I broke the news to Leilani.
“We may not be going to Budapest.”
A quick check confirmed it. Malév’s website had essentially been replaced by a Word document announcement of its demise. No clear instructions. No thoughtful next steps. Just a digital version of: au revoir et bonne chance.
We were far too tired to solve anything at 4:30 in the morning, so we did what any seasoned travelers would do under the circumstances.
We went to bed.
When we woke later that morning, we were both sicker than we had been in ages. Apparently, dancing until dawn in tiny dresses during a snowstorm is not especially supportive of the immune system.
Still, the trip needed rescuing.
As the daughter of an American Airlines pilot, my loyalty runs deep. When we originally booked the flights, I had insisted on using American’s website. Why? It felt familiar. I trusted it.
At the time, it seemed like a small preference. In hindsight, it was our saving grace.
We Skype-called American’s reservations line with our scratchy voices and asked for help. It turned out Malév had been part of the Oneworld Alliance, which meant American was able to honor our tickets. They re-routed us the next day through London to Prague.
Leilani then called our Budapest hotel, shared our very sad tale, and they graciously agreed not to charge us for the night we had booked.
Crisis, mostly averted.
We also gained an extra day to rest and, more importantly, a stop at Boots pharmacy in Heathrow to stock up on cold medicine. Glamorous? No. Necessary? Extremely.
So, what is the moral of the story?
Do not stay out until 4:00 a.m. in mini dresses during a snowstorm.
Actually, yes. That is one moral. And thankfully, those days are long behind me.
But the more meaningful lesson is this: thoughtful travel planning matters most when the journey changes course.
That Budapest hotel did not have to refund us. If the same thing happened today, they very likely would not. And had we booked directly with Malév, we may have had far fewer options, if any. Fortunately, American came through for us that day.
In today’s travel climate, travel insurance can be an essential part of protecting your investment. Not all policies are created equal, and the details matter. The coverage, the exclusions, the fine print — these are not the most romantic parts of planning a journey, but they are often what allow the experience to continue with far more ease when something unexpected happens.
This is also where the value of a thoughtful travel advisor becomes clear.
A good advisor is not simply there to reserve the beautiful hotel or recommend the perfect guide. They are there to help hold the whole journey together. To anticipate. To advocate. To coordinate quietly behind the scenes. To help transform uncertainty into a path forward when you are exhausted, sick, and trying to make decisions on a phone that belongs in a museum.
The most seamless journeys are not effortless by accident. They are designed with care.
In the end, it all worked out.
We coughed and sniffled our way through Prague during what became a brutal cold snap across Europe, with snow and sub-zero temperatures lingering for days. It was not how I imagined my first visit to the city, but I was grateful to be there.
We took refuge in cafés. We warmed our hands around mugs of svařák, Prague’s beloved hot mulled wine. Instead of going clubbing, we went to the Prague Opera because it had excellent heating and sumptuous décor. I also spent an unreasonable amount of time searching the city for true Czech kolaches like the ones my grandmother used to make from scratch.
It was not the trip we planned.
But it became something entirely its own.
And perhaps that is what stays with me most.
Not just the airline collapse, or the cold remedies, or the tiny phone, or the dresses that had no business being outside in February. But the way travel, even when it unravels, still has a way of leaving us with something meaningful.
A story.
A little wisdom.
A memory that softens with time.
And, in my case, one unfinished piece of the journey.
I still have yet to visit Budapest.
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