Spirit Airlines to start charging for MIDDLE seats!

by Grant Martin on

Airlines have been doing anything they possibly can to raise money over the past few months, from checked bag fees to charging for soft drinks to increasing the price for almost everything that formerly had a fee associated with it.

Now, according to an article over at Smarter Travel, Spirit has decided to start charging extra for online seat selection.

Carriers have done this before — many current legacy carriers charge extra for sitting in an aisle or window near the front of the plane or in preferred seats. But what Spirit is proposing is to charge for ANY seat selected online before departure — even the seats that most people don’t want.

Fees will range from $15 for a window to $10 for an aisle to $5 dollars for a middle seat.

So if you want to sit next to a person that you’re traveling with or want to sit in a decent seat and want to pick your spots before departure, you’re basically screwed into paying these fees. It looks like you can still go to the airport the day of departure and get assigned seats, but there’s no telling who you’ll be sitting next to and where at that point.

[Via Airfarewatchdog]

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Spirit Airlines to cut nearly half of pilot and flight attendant workforce

by Grant Martin on

Spirit Airlines just announced that it would be furloughing nearly half of its crew today, in a letter it sent to it’s union leaders. The layoffs, an effort to cut costs and pare down operations, comes as the airline closes hubs in New York and San Juan while significantly shrinking Detroit and Ft. Lauderdale.

While unfortunate news for the employees and the airline, it is perhaps best that the carrier makes these moves before the financial situation becomes too tight. It’s best to continue limited operations while the market is sour then keep going strong and run out of money.

Perhaps after the market rebounds and airlines are easily able to operate in the red again can Spirit regain it’s balance.

How will this effect the everyday traveler? You’ll probably notice some cutbacks in routes and capacity. But the main routes will stay mostly in tact. Try asking your pilot or flight attendant how things are going on your next flight for a real perspective on company morale.

Airline torches woman’s baggage

by Jeffrey White on

Did your airline lose your luggage recently? Relax, it could be worse. Just ask Barbara Blewitt.

When she arrived in Atlantic City recently on a Spirit Airlines flight, she was shocked at what she found: When her luggage materialized, it was burned, including everything inside.

“I had no clothes, no underwear, no cosmetics, nothing but a burned suitcase,” Blewitt tells Tampa Bay’s 10 News.

The airline reportedly issued Blewitt a “baggage irregularity receipt,” but she has yet to receive compensation. Spirit Airlines tells the television channel that it is looking further into the matter. It is still unclear how this might have happened.

Asks Blewitt, “How do I know how good your plane is if you can’t even take care of my luggage, or at least say I’m sorry.” A fair question.

Here’s another one: Why go to Atlantic City in the first place?

Spirit Airlines CEO: “Let him tell the world how bad we are.”

by Justin Glow on

Remember our post a few weeks back in which Alex Rudloff (one of the brains behind our blogging platform) detailed his terrible experience with Spirit Airlines? When Alex wrote the post, comments immediately started to flood in. One of those commenters was a woman named Christy who — along with her husband — had a similar bad experience, and emailed Spirit Airlines’ customer service department looking for answers. The email was eventually escalated to Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza.

It seems that having a basic understanding of email isn’t required to obtain such the CEO position, because Mr. Baldanza made the mistake of hitting “reply to all” (which included Christy) in his snarky response to her quest for answers. Here it is:

“Please respond, [Customer Service Representative], but we owe him nothing as far as I’m concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He’s never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny.”

Well isn’t that just lovely?

Head over to Alex’s blog to see the email in its entirety.

Spirit Airline Woes

by Justin Glow on

Alex Rudloff, one of the brains behind Gadling’s blogging engine, recently tried to fly to Las Vegas from Orlando via Spirit Airlines when he ran into a few problems. First, his flight was canceled. “That’s sucks,” he wrote on his blog, “but hey, that’s the reality of the god awful air industry here in the States.”

To make matters worse, Spirit Airlines made the rescheduling process a nightmare. “The 800# then hangs up on me. I call back, hitting 0 to talk to an operator, same message, hangs up on me. I try all the appropriate sounding options on their voice mail, and get hung up on every single time. Thanks, Spirit Air! What went from a somewhat understandable situation (relativity is a bitch), now has me pissy. Finally, I try “book new flight” to speak to a spirit airlines sales agent. Sure enough, that one (the option where they take the money) works fine”

Finally, he’s able to speak with a representative who puts him on another flight that arrives 5 hours later. “There’s no upgrades or anything like that, no option for a partner airline or a transfer, no real attempt at anything. Here’s the kicker. They make you pay extra to bring a bag. They refused to even refund this $5 each way fee, not even for one of ways.”

How frustrating. Anyone else have any Spirit Air horror stories?