Over 120 US Lawmakers Urge Google to Strip Spirit Staff's Medical and Disciplinary Files From AI Deal
Pilots warn the $10M sale could chill safety reporting, but a bankruptcy judge will not rule until 6 November
More than 120 US lawmakers have asked Google and Spirit Airlines to keep staff files out of a $10 million (about £7.5 million) data deal. They want to exclude staff data wherever possible and add extra protection for any medical, disciplinary, or pay records that remain.
Senator Elizabeth Warren co-led the call. Google wants the archive, which holds half a billion workplace chat messages, to train artificial intelligence (AI). Nearly 1,000 Spirit staff lost their jobs in Las Vegas alone, and a bankruptcy judge is due to consider the sale on 6 November.
What the Lawmakers Want Google to Remove
Representative Steven Horsford, a Nevada Democrat, co-led the letter with Warren. They sent it on 8 October to Spirit and Google chief executives Dave Davis and Sundar Pichai, six days before a planned court hearing. Altogether, 121 members of Congress signed it, including 13 senators. The list of data to exclude includes employee records, timecards, payroll data, and any Microsoft 365 content that contains information about flight attendants.
For records that remain, the letter singles out disciplinary files, pay details, and medical or accommodation requests. It asks for protection even after names and email addresses come out. Stripping out names will not always keep a dataset anonymous, the lawmakers warn, citing the US National Institute of Standards and Technology's view that such data can sometimes reveal identities. 'Innovation cannot come at the expense of workers' privacy,' Horsford said.
What Google Would Get for $10 Million
Court findings lawmakers cited put the archive at about 500 million Microsoft Teams messages and roughly 100 million emails. Google won the auction in August, three months after Spirit shut down during its second bankruptcy in two years. PYMNTS reported that records like these can teach AI systems to handle complex business tasks. The archive also covers 30 million lines of in-house code, 20 million SharePoint items, and 17 million OneDrive files, as the chart below shows.
Google says personal details will be left out or scrubbed by an independent firm before it receives anything. 'We are not looking to buy any personal information from Spirit,' a spokesperson told PYMNTS. A court-appointed privacy ombudsman recommended approval on 5 October, provided Spirit removes or de-identifies customers' personal information linked to about 97 million people, Reuters reported. The agency also reported a rival $7.5 million (£5.6 million) bid from the AI data firm Mercor.
Why Pilots and Flight Attendants Fear the Deal
Union leaders say the risk goes beyond privacy. Captain Jason Ambrosi, who leads the Air Line Pilots Association, said airline safety reports work because pilots and other staff trust they stay secret. 'Break that trust and people stop reporting,' he said. Sara Nelson, whose union speaks for 55,000 flight attendants at 20 airlines, warned of 'tremendous implications for workers across the economy'.
The lawmakers want no staff data to move until safeguards stop anyone identifying or profiling workers. They also want an independent review of staff confidentiality before any data transfer. A court hearing on Google's purchase has slipped from 14 October to 6 November, the trade newspaper Travel Weekly reported. Until the bankruptcy court approves the sale, no Spirit data can change hands.
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