Flight attendants at Spirit Airlines are objecting to a court-approved sale of the airline’s employee data to Google, warning that the deal protects customer privacy but leaves worker records vulnerable. The union representing the flight attendants, the Association of Flight Attendants, filed a limited objection on Tuesday, arguing that Google’s privacy commitments are designed for consumers, not employees. The data involved includes approximately 100 million worker emails, HR files, payroll records, and information on employee behavior and productivity, all of which the union says is more sensitive than customer data but receives weaker safeguards.
The sale follows Spirit Airlines’ bankruptcy and its decision to auction off a vast dataset. Google won the auction on August 14 with a $10 million bid, beating out rival Mercor Corporation, which had repeatedly offered to scrub the data itself but refused to use a third party. Under the deal, Google agreed to pay for an independent service to remove personally identifying information from the data before receiving it. The company also committed to never intentionally re-identify individuals and to bind any third-party buyers to the same terms, but the union says those promises do not cover confidential employment details that could be exposed even without names.
The flight attendants’ filing argues that de-identification does not address the content of records, such as disciplinary correspondence, training deficiencies, leave requests, or internal chats about staffing and grievances. They say that while Google has pledged not to deliberately link the data back to individuals, the company could combine the worker data with other Google datasets, making re-association possible. The union also noted that the risk of de-anonymization is not speculative, citing research from 2017 that showed increasingly powerful hardware makes it easier to match scrubbed data with public information.
Adam Schwartz, a privacy litigation director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, told the source that the sale alarmed privacy advocates because it uses employee data for a new purpose without consent. He said that a bankrupt company selling emails for AI training does not meet that standard. The union’s objection does not seek to block the entire sale but asks the court to deny approval until Google agrees to exclude all flight attendant records and to notify workers if a third party gains access.
Google’s spokesperson told the source that the company acquired the data to improve its products and AI models, and that it will not receive personal information, as the dataset will be scrubbed by a third party before transfer. But the AFA argued that Google’s process gives only the buyer a voice in how de-identification works, leaving workers out of the negotiating room. They also noted that a court-appointed ombudsman will oversee the stripping of personal identifiers, yet that ombudsman’s role appears focused on consumer protection laws, which do not cover worker confidentiality.
The auction process, described in a court filing by Spirit’s investment banker, showed that Google initially bid $5 million and promised to cover scrubbing costs. Bids from other parties were rejected after they requested consumer data that Spirit refused to sell, and any bid including personal identifying information was dropped in the first round. An alternate $7.5 million bid from Mercor was accepted as a backup if Google fails to complete the purchase. The flight attendants said that while Google’s commitments are real, a pseudonymized dataset can still reveal which crew bases filed grievances, how small groups performed in training, or what employees said about management and staffing, and that sensitive information tied to no name would pass through untouched.
