Overview:
Entrepreneur Jhonson Napoléon launched an online campaign urging Haitians to help finance a Haitian-owned airline to replace Spirit Airlines. While some supporters view the push as a bold diaspora initiative, critics cite the enormous financial hurdles, Haiti’s history of failed aviation projects and Napoléon’s links to past corruption scandals.
MIAMI — The collapse of Spirit Airlines has triggered a wave of speculation, hope and skepticism among Haitians in the diaspora after a shadowy entrepreneur launched a $25 million fundraising campaign calling on the diaspora to help create a Haitian-owned airline.
South Florida-based entrepreneur Jhonson Napoléon — long associated with fraudulent scandals, enshrouded business dealings and risk-taking zeal — began urging Haitians to rally behind what he described as an opportunity to build “an airline for the diaspora, by the diaspora.” His goal is to raise $25 million through public contributions to either purchase or lease aircraft assets going out of use from the airline’s bankruptcy.
“This is bigger than aviation,” Napoléon said in a video, urging support for the project. “This is about ownership, dignity, accountability, and believing Haitians can build major institutions together.”
Napoléon’s suggestion went viral in Haitian online spaces, where supporters celebrated it as a rare opportunity for Haitians abroad to collectively invest in a major business venture tied to national pride and access to air travel. Chatter has continued to spread widely on LinkedIn, TikTok, Facebook and other forums.
A site dedicated to collecting pledges of $50 to $25,000, HaitiRiseAir.com, has appeared. Another to be used as the company site, SpiritofHaitiAir.com, is under development. As of Thursday, the site tallied nearly 19,000 pledges totaling over $34 million. The pledges, per the site, are not funds being collected, but serve as a way to express interest.
While interest is high, so is deep skepticism around the community.
Many Haitians online questioned both the financial feasibility of the proposal and Napoléon’s credibility, citing Haiti’s long history of failed diaspora-backed ventures, aviation projects and crowdfunding initiatives that generated excitement but ultimately collapsed amid mismanagement, lack of transparency or allegations of fraud and illicit traffic.
“This reads more like a buzz-generating statement than anything else,” Jefferson Jeanniton, a supply chain and logistics manager, said on LinkedIn. “This isn’t really adding up.”
Jeanniton explained that with most of Spirit’s fleet being leased, lessors are already moving to repossess their planes. Regulatory approvals, operational setup, staffing, insurance, maintenance, and capital requirements alone would likely run into several hundred million dollars, potentially billions.
Also, Jeanniton said, rising fuel costs and other industry pressures were major factors in Spirit’s situation from the start, and the airline industry as a whole is still facing significant challenges.
In a widely shared Reddit discussion, one user was blunt.
“This is obviously going to be a scam,” the commenter wrote.
Others noted outright that Napoléon is not trustworthy to them.
