I Really Thought Spirit Airlines Was Doing Better. Maybe It’s Not.

by SharonKurheg

Joe and I have always poked fun at Spirit Airlines. It’s not their fault. Well, in some ways it is. But we’re just at a time in our lives where we want to pay one price for our flight and not get nickeled and dimed for virtually everything. So we’ve never flown Spirit.

Over time though, they seemed to be doing better:

And in general, I had heard less bad things about them. So (and I haven’t even told Joe this) I was ready to possibly consider them as a possible option.

Until now.

Mark Matousek is a transportation reporter for Business Insider. He recently wrote about his third flight with Spirit. You can read about it here but his Reader’s Digest condensed version (“TL/DR,” for those of you under a certain age) is:

  • I’ve flown Spirit Airlines three times and have been consistently disappointed.
  • But my most recent trip with the airline was the worst travel experience of my life.
  • I arrived in New York 34 hours later than originally scheduled for reasons both within and outside Spirit’s control.
  • Only once did I feel like I was treated with anything but indifference by the airline and its employees.
  • Had Spirit’s customer service exceeded my expectations, the trip could have reversed my negative opinion of the airline.
  • But I’m now even more motivated to never fly Spirit again.

My take on his post:

There are all kinds of things going through my head…

When I was reading it, my very first thought was, “If he had already had really bad experiences with his first 2 flights on Spirit, why in the world did he book them a third time? Lesson learned, cut your losses and don’t use them!” We’ve sworn off an airline for years and just don’t use them…even if they’re the cheapest, most convenient, etc.

My second thought was that dude really needs to check out Freebird. He totally could have gotten to his destination faster, on that first flight in 2017, if he had it.

I thought his wanting some sort of compensation was VERY unrealistic. I don’t care what Delta did 2 years ago; Spirit is an airline that saves/makes money by charging you for printing out your boarding pass at the airport and $3 for a bottle of water, and you expect them to put a whole plane up in hotel rooms, because of a weather delay?

As for his whole issue with not knowing where his bags were, dude, they sell RFID tags you can get so you can track your bags wherever they are.

I could believe that Spirit’s customer service might have something to be desired. Despite some of their flight attendants having a great sense of humor, unless the lessons learned from Disney in 2017 are carried over and taught to newbies and reinforced to everyone on a regular basis, those people skills could easily be lost. No wonder why they were voted one of America’s most hated travel companies in 2018 (and in 2019 they ranked even worse).

Of course, we don’t know Mark Matousek’s attitude when he was talking to the Spirit reps. And, of course, you catch more bees with honey than with vinegar. He didn’t say how he treated the airline’s employees in question, but he used the words “incompetence,” “carelessness,” and “penny-pinching,” while saying that he was “disappointed” and “frustrated,” which are all pretty angry words. So it makes me kind of wonder, y’know? Refusing to discuss the situation with Spirit afterward also seemed, if you will, a little mean spirited. And definitely not very journalistic.

But still, in looking at just his side of the story, it’s probably just enough for me to go back to saying I’ll never fly Spirit (Sorry not sorry, Joe).

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This post first appeared on Your Mileage May Vary

4 comments

Shaun January 16, 2020 - 3:16 pm

100% agree with your Freebird rec. Used them MCO-ORD & Spirit flight got cancelled. Freebird got us home that night…with $1100 mqd on Delta to boot.

Spirit is fine for the price when the flight isn’t cancelled. But if it is you are basically f*”&$d

Reply
Dave S January 16, 2020 - 10:28 pm

Fly from ohare to tampa 10 x a year. Not once has any flight been delayed with the exception of bad weather.

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Warren January 17, 2020 - 11:52 pm

Spirit changes their flight times to make it appear they were on time. Perfectly legal…

Reply
Kazoo86 January 18, 2020 - 11:00 am

With the Spirit bashing on other media outlets, I can only post here. My brother and I flew them a couple years ago, on short notice and we were very satisfied. Detroit to Tampa. No delay, no baggage issues. Smooth Flite. Would fly again.

Reply

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