A Word of Thanks: A Spirit Airlines Review
Nov 26th, 2008 | By Jared BlankAs we head into Thanksgiving, I thought I would share a kind word about Spirit Airlines. Spirit is the most maligned US carrier, with people frequently complaining about their service, their gruff CEO, their lack of customer care, their baggage fees, their planes, their routes, their this, their that. Boo hoo, I say.
I flew Spirit 2 days ago (a $21 ticket in their “Big Front Seat” section), and let me say this: Spirit puts out a perfectly fine product. The Big Front Seat is a bargain in most cases (and oddly enough, is sometimes cheaper than their coach product). Roughly the width and pitch of domestic business class on every other airline, it’s cheaper than just about every other airline - a round trip ticket from New York to Ft. Lauderdale will set you back about $500. Continental charges about $900 for roughly the same thing. No, you won’t get food on the flight. But I’ve never understood why people whined incessantly when there was food, and now complain when there isn’t.
Three times a week they offer ridiculous sale fares, with flights frequently around $50 round trip. Yes, availability is limited (what do you expect for $50?), but I check all the time and I almost always manage to find those cheap fares available. Sure, you have to pay $3 for water. Big deal, considering it cost you more to take a taxi to the airport than it did to fly to Nassau.
When I flew Ryanair I found the same situation: people’s complaints never ended, but the reality was this: it was 95% the same as every other flight I’ve ever taken. Except it was about 1/10th the price, and I had to buy a soda.
Spirit flies new planes to a bunch of warm weather destinations for very little money (if you catch a sale). I think it’s time we all stopped complaining about it and take a moment at Thanksgiving to be thankful that I can fly from Detroit to Los Angeles for $29. Save your complaining for every other airline that charges $279 for that route and makes you pay for your meal.
I flew Spirit Airline this past week. I paid to check 3 baggages andonly one made it. At the destination they could not give me a reasonas to why my luggage was left behind. I filed a report. They saidthey’d call me back with information and never did. I had to storminto their office in Managua to find out what they hell the problemwas. Mind you they told me my luggage would come on Tuesday at 1am. Igot there Friday the week before and was leaving Monday the day beforemy luggage would be there. I didn’t check any baggage on the way backbecause I had none to check in. I asked for them to send the luggageon another carrier that I would pay for it because it was things thatwere going to an orphanage and they refused to. I call customerservice and they tell me something totally different from what i wastold at the airport. This people are the worst airline, the worstcustomer service and they hire the most incompetent people. Theydon’t want to refund my money for the luggage that did not make itand they don’t consider the fact that I am a spirit member.Any otherairline would have given you a voucher for something. NEVER WILL ITRAVEL ON THAT AIRLINE!!! I rather pay double or triple the pricethan to deal with this non sense.
I also fly spirit alot and cant complain about the price .
They did once loose my luggage but I was explained at the fort lauderdale airport by a ticket agent named Thomas Russo what the problem is.
When you give them your bag, it goes from them to the US govt tsa screening center where they check bags for many airlines at the same time and then send it back to them.
There are alot of things that can happen at that point. Im sure that if spirit handle it directly ,they would be to blame.
Hello Jared Blanc,
You must be smoking Banana peels! I dare you to fly Spirit once more and be honest, tell the truth, SPIRIT SUCKS!
It’s worth it to pay more to get on another carrier. They will do nothing for you at all if you ask. They will look to take your money at every possible opportunity - even when it costs them nothing - even when they would be saving money. We wanted to delete the 2nd half of our trip on a connection flight, but they wanted $2330 because it was a change. It didn’t matter that they would end up with 4 more RT seats to sell to someone else.