Despite holding status on other carriers, I find myself flying Spirit Airlines and loving it. Why would I willingly give up a shot at free first class seats, meals, free bags, and other perks? Because Spirit is very good at what they do.
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Limited First Class Seats On The Flag Carriers
I love first class and business class products as much as everyone else, well, perhaps not as much as Lucky does – no one is on his level. But I don’t need it for every flight and especially not on short flights. On some short routes from United and American (I hold top-tier status with both) they don’t even offer first class seats. Even if there are first class seats, I may not clear my upgrades. The airlines have worked hard to monetize the cabin (fair enough) but have also reduced the number of first class seats (I’m less forgiving on this) further reducing the chances for an upgrade.
If I am sitting in the back, the flag carriers will still put me in an extra leg room seat most of the time anyway, but a middle seat in extra leg room cabin is still a middle seat. If I am not sitting in the front, we might as well only focus on the back of the bus anyway, and that is not as excruciating as you might think.
Short Direct Flights Not Long Haul
Flights from the northeast US to Florida are great examples of ideal Spirit Airlines flights. I frequently fly to the south but doing so on United/American/Delta requires a connection from my home city adding hours to my journey and a layover. I’ll gladly trade a slim chance at an upgrade for a shorter journey time.
Here’s what I mean:
Comparable Pricing Isn’t Comparable
Using the same example (Pittsburgh to Fort Myers), Delta comes in closest at $194, right? Wrong, that’s a basic economy seat and for any of the other factors to come into play, like a chance for an upgrade, a carry-on bag, status and mileage earning potential, I will need to pay more.
Basic economy fares are nothing new and I understand why the airlines do it. They want an opportunity to capture the business on a comparable service level or acquire the fare creep from add-ons that Spirit, Frontier, and Allegiant push during the sales process. The problem is that they aren’t hitting the mark. Delta is offering a competing basic economy fare on the route at twice the price before the flag carrier buy-ups become available.
Our last Spirit flight home from Florida wasn’t perfect. We had an issue buying a seat assignment to secure space together, were reseated to the back of the plane in a windowless row. The FA reseated folks that had been assigned the last row (they had 2 of 3 seats with one open) to the row in front of us with one occupant making the row full and leaving the back row for the FA to sit and read magazines for about an hour and a half. That being said, Spirit was still selling their Big Front Seat for $41 as an upgrade, if they would have had three, I would have bought them without a doubt. Delta has buy-up upgrades, so does United and American, but they will never be $41. As an elite, I am glad they aren’t, but as a non-elite on that airline, I wish they had more for sale.
Product Is Better Than Frontier
Frontier has done a great job of focusing on secondary and tertiary markets with point-to-point service. From Pittsburgh to Orlando and Cleveland to Fort Myers, flights direct to Florida are cheap, quick and easy. However, as delightful as their flight attendants may be (they really do seem to enjoy their job) – the seats are just painful. It’s not the seat pitch, that’s not actually bad, but their slimline seats are unlike any other I have tried and particularly uncomfortable. It’s one thing to make the passenger space small in the back of the bus, all the carriers have done that, it’s quite another to make the seat actually painful to sit in.
On Spirit, they may not have La-Z-Boy recliners, but their seats aren’t painful to sit in. They also sell 2-2 “Big Front Seats” which get cheaper once the door has closed and they remain unsold. And upgrading is usually really cheap, our last offered a Big Front Seat for just $41 more than what we had already paid. Considering that choosing any seat would incur at least $10, and seats towards the front but not necessarily exit rows would cost at least $17, the extra cost is almost negligible. No wonder they sold 7 of 8 our last flight.
More Reliable Than Allegiant
I refuse to fly Allegiant. As far as LCC carriers go, there are well-run airlines and poorly-run airlines (just as there are in the legacy carrier segment). Allegiant’s operations have been anecdotally terrible and involve too many sacrifices for an inferior experience. Allow me to digress. Three groups of travelers I know flew Allegiant within the last six months and each one of them sustained substantial delays (no less than 12 hours, one was delayed two days). Contributing factors to Allegiant’s competency issues are an aging fleet of MD-80s (they have already replaced all of the 757s) and a very tight equipment supply. As those very old frames experience more and more maintenance delays (always better to be delayed than dead), there aren’t adequate spares positioned to carry passengers forward.
Allegiant also uses the Ryan Air/Southwest airport model as opposed to Spirit Airlines adaptation of it. People will fly from nowhere to somewhere, but not nowhere to nowhere. What that means is that Allegiant can fill an airplane from almost any smaller community like Grand Island, NE to Las Vegas. But their use of secondary airports (like Chicago Midway is for Southwest) like St. Petersburg for Tampa, Punta Gorda for Fort Myers, and Mesa, AZ for Phoenix are a significant distance from their associated city. I just don’t want to add 45 minutes to my journey to get to where I really want to go.
Why My Love Affair With Spirit Was Unlikely
Currently, I hold United 1K status and American Airlines Executive Platinum (though I am not going out of my way anymore to sustain it). I have also held Alaska Airlines MVP 75k, Jet Blue Mosaic and Southwest Airlines Companion Pass in the last few years, but none of those have been my regular choices. With top-tier status elsewhere, why wouldn’t I fly with them when flights are comparable in price? The legacy carriers are going to give me free checked bags, priority boarding, miles, seat selection and – if I don’t clear an upgrade – a snack and a drink.
- Miles are less valuable than before. Seats on American for routes I want to redeem are less available than ever before though it looks as though they have started to turn that tide recently.
- Fewer upgrades. As mentioned before there are both fewer seats and cheaper first class tickets (or paid upgrades).
- Direct flights are better. Direct flights make long weekend trips possible from anywhere, adding connections on both ends of the trip almost certainly eat a vacation day.
- Meals on short, direct flights aren’t important. I just don’t need to eat on a two-hour flight.
- It makes more travel possible. Normal prices for a weekend trip to Florida have traditionally been $250-350/each. That’s honestly a fair price for the distance of the journey and the origin and destination. But at $99/each, my family has the opportunity to travel much more frequently and to more destinations.
Cheap, Cheerful, Easy
If you board a Ryan Air plane expecting Lufthansa, you’re going to hate the flight. If you get on a Ryan Air flight happy as can be that you snagged a £10 fare somewhere then you have a different approach. Using Spirit with full knowledge of how to avoid day-of-travel pain points, I couldn’t be happier with the carrier. Their flight attendants are generally pleasant and helpful. The flights we take are short, direct, and easy.
If you don’t live in a major hub city, Spirit may be the best option for you. Here are some quick and easy tips to help you fall in love with Spirit and avoid punitive add-ons.
- Watch for cheap tickets. Set alerts on Google.com/flights for direct routes on Spirit, they will drop sometimes close to your travel period.
- Pay in advance for luggage options. If you always carry-on a rollaboard, just pay for it, your fare is cheap enough that it won’t really impact your budget. You might be able to get around paying for luggage if you see the next item.
- Buy more than one seat. Seats are typically assigned together, though the airline is only required to keep families together with at least one parent and one child under 13 – in practice, they don’t separate parties unless they have to. By pure coincidence, I ended up with three tickets (my wife and daughter skipped a flight) and an entire row to myself. But frankly, at $50 each way (perhaps as cheap as $30 if you buy at the airport) why not just buy three tickets and spread out? You may or may not even be able to bring three personal items as a result. On some routes, $90-150 one-way is still cheaper than basic economy on a competitor.
- Don’t stretch the rules. While we have never had an agent twist the screws on us (like they have at Ryan Air), they could. If they ever put my backpack in a personal item sizer or on a scale, I’d be in big trouble. If you follow their rules, you’ll be in good shape.
Have you had a good experience with an LCC? Am I just having lucky experiences with Spirit?
You imply that Delta charges for a carry on bag for Basic Economy. They don’t. Its free for everyone. And if you dont want to pay for a checked bag, just get status or their Amex card. Then its also free.
You may pay less for Spirit on some flights, but you’ll pay for it the day they cancel your flight and you are SOL; then you’ll be buying a last minute flight home on another airline. Then watch all your savings disappear in a flash.
I will edit any assertion that you pay for a carry-on with Delta though I’m quite certain pax pay for it with UA. But I am not going to get the Delta Amex so that I have status with them, I would just fly AA or UA where I already have status. Rather, I would rather have the direct flight at half price. On Spirit I have yet to encounter a delay (this will surely jinx it) but I think you are thinking of Allegiant and cover their rescheduling issues.
i’m confused, you are willing to upgrade to Spirits bigger seats, but you won’t pay for the upgrade to first class on a major airline. Seems a little counter intuitive.
How many miles and EQPs will you miss by flying Spirit? There’s a lost opportunity cost too.
Ryan, there’s a little more to compute there. For example, in the case of the Delta flights to RSW, the cost for a comparable product was twice as much and that’s before an upgrade. Had I upgraded the $99 round trip in both directions at $41, I would still pay only $181 roundtrip for a Big Front seat as opposed to sitting in the back on Delta. And yes, I lose the EQM/PQMs but I will gladly trade that for a half-priced ticket and a direct flight.
I agree, I don’t mind Spirit or Frontier(though I concur with your take on the slimline seats) as a frequent leisure traveler from Cleveland. The most important thing is as you state is to have realistic expectations.
I’ve taken trips to Denver, Philadelphia, and Orlando recently on LCCs and total airfare combined I’m still under $200. My best deal was a last minute flight home from Orlando, $17, less than my Uber to the airport.
As far as ontime performance, I’ve flown Delta 5 times over the past year as a low level elite, and every single flight has gotten delayed or cancelled, I’ll take my chances paying significantly less
You make a good point.
I certainly agree with your takes on Spirit and Frontier, especially out of places like PIT, CLE, and CAK. For direct hops under a few hours (like down to Florida or Myrtle Beach), I’d rather fly them and save time and money. I enjoy flying them back from Myrtle Beach since the price is usually around $15 and the schedule is almost perfect – hotel check-out is at 12ish, and the flight leaves around 3:00. (The way down leaves around 7 am, however…). While the airport ticketing hours are a bit inconvenient at my local airport, I only live about 10 minutes away and can time it to where I don’t even have to pay for parking (14 minutes or less at my local airport is free).
The slimline seats are probably the worst parts of flying them – especially the virtually unpadded seatbacks and headrests.
Right Gino? Those seats feel like a gymnastics springboard. It seems like you are using Spirit/Frontier the same way I am.
While MDW is certainly a secondary airport for Chicago, it doesn’t really fit with the other examples you give. It’s often faster to get downtown from MDW than ORD, so it’s not like you’d be flying in to a less desirable destination per se.
That’s fair, perhaps I should have used Hobby, Islip, or “Hollywood FL” (Fort Lauderdale) though that has now more or less become a destination unto itself.
I’d say Spirit and the like have become far more viable now that the scourge of Basic Economy is spreading to markets where they compete against the legacies. It used to be that AA would compete pretty much to the dollar, in which case, I’d rather go with them. Then along came Basic Economy and the resulting price increases for plain old coach. If I’m going to get the Spirit treatment, I’d frankly much rather fly Spirit, where I can at least pick and choose the extras I want (i.e. seat assignments, carry-on bags, etc.).
BTW, to your point above, Hobby really depends on where in Houston you’re trying to get to. IAH is great if your destination is on the north/northwest side. It’s FAR more convenient, though, to get to downtown or south/southwest Houston from HOU than IAH.
Perhaps a better example would have been from Ryan Air’s Charleroi for Brussels or Beauvais for Paris (both a considerable distance out and nowhere the metro they claim).
Is it still true that you can avoid the ticketing fee by buying at the airport? This seems so silly to me since it eats an agent’s time but here we are.
According to Mommy Points as of last week, that was still true (http://bit.ly/2DjnKH1) – I look forward to trying it myself this week.
FWIW I wasn’t able to get the airport counter trick to work. It did avoid the ticketing fee, but a) the price they charged was higher than the price (including the fee) online, and b) the only flight they offered me was one that was nonexistent. It might have just been an incompetent agent in my case.
Shhhhh don’t tell everyone or the big front seats will get more expensive. Seriously.
Yeah, sorry about that. They are sold out on my upcoming flights in a few weeks, I already tried to upgrade.
Spirit is good, but Fort Lauderdale is a true disaster if you’re connecting from South America to a U.S. flight. Immigration is routinely so full that they make you wait on the plane to enter, and then TSA in FLL is just as bad — nightmare queues that aren’t queues at all. Horrible, expensive food options — all run by the same mega-corporation. Spirit has improved a lot lately, but it’s a pity they have to fly through FLL as a hub — easily the worst airport in the world, not because of Spirit, but because of the sixth-world, don’t-give-a-darn attitude of U.S. government employees and the state of Florida.
I wouldn’t disagree with your assessment of FLL, though Miami was horrible the last time I cleared there (more than an hour once bags were collected even using Global Entry).
Just helped my buddy book a flight for his dad yesterday and against my normal best judgement we booked him on spirit. Our rationale was the big seat is for 91 each way from Fll to LAX when the fare is only 180. 362 to sit up front on a transcontinental flight is totally worth it. His dad is a bigger guy and so it was a no brainer. Me personally, I would still hesitate to fly them but there are some really good deals they offer if you are willing to take a risk. You have to understand how the airline works and know when something does goes wrong it all goes downhill very quickly. But that can happen on any airline.
I’m not sure there is much of a risk, especially in FLL. In the case of a full cancellation and refund, they don’t have to book you an onward flight, but this is not unique to Spirit. United, Delta, American, and Southwest all have similar contract clauses, perhaps Spirit just enforces their option to not rebook you more often than the others?
Allegiant, however, just doesn’t have the elasticity in their fleet nor reliable equipment to combat the endless delays. Combined with the fact that they more often fly to airports with less traffic from other carriers and an infrequent schedule, it makes it near impossible to overcome a mechanical delay in under a few hours.
Are you a member of the $9 fare club through Spirit? Unless things have changed, the membership more or less pays for itself after 2 roundtrip flights. Might be worth checking out. Also, I agree with the person up the thread that mentioned going to the ticket counter and buying a ticket (if feasible). Have had family members do this, and they basically paid only for their carry-on/checked bags fees…ticket price was so cheap.
I’ve been looking into this, I will compare my costs at checkout on my next booking.
The Big Front Seat is cheaper once the door closes? The concept makes sense, I just haven’t heard it advertised like so before! Could you explain more? (N.b. Did do a bit of research before asking, but didn’t find anything.)