How I beat Spirit Airlines at their own game, and in the process realized I may not need to pack so much

How I beat Spirit Airlines at their own game, and in the process realized I may not need to pack so much

While I’m guessing most of you are very familiar with Spirit Airlines, perhaps from your own past experience, for those that aren’t, Spirit is considered a pioneer among Ultra Low-Cost Carriers, or ULCCs. This is a fancy term for airlines that offer very low fares, but charge you for literally everything imaginable. Though extremely controversial, Spirit for many years has been the most profitable domestic airline, and also is generally considered to be the main reason we’ve seen many of the bigger airlines start to charge more fees. There are many people that have very strong negative opinions about Spirit Airlines due to their controversial business model, but their defense has always been that they are very transparent upfront about all of the fees. I decided recently to see for myself if this was true.
I try to book my flights using frequent flyer miles as much as I can, but I also like to try to avoid wasting miles on domestic flights that could be used for more valuable international award flights. I signed up for the Spirit Airlines World Elite MasterCard last year, which gave me 15,000 Free Spirit Miles after my first purchase, added on an additional 8,000 miles by taking their “Hate Thousand Miles” survey, and then an additional 5,000 miles through buying toothpaste from Wal-Mart using their online shopping portal. (Funny enough, they tried to sell us on the card during the flight, claiming that they offered an “industry-leading frequent flyer program.”)
Not surprisingly, Spirit also makes it extremely hard to redeem their frequent flyer miles for flights, charging 12,500 miles for one-way cross-country flights on certain mid-week days, but 45,000 on most other days, including weekends. Given that right now I do have the luxury of being able to fly midweek, I figured I might as well take advantage of this, and booked a roundtrip flight for 25,000. While all airlines will tack on a $5.60 “security fee” each way for award resrevations, Spirit also adds on a $15 fee if you book your reservation less than six months in advance. I don’t really know anyone who plans short-distance budget air travel more than six months in advance, but I decided to suck it up and pay that fee, but no other fees to them.
There’s certainly no shortage of opportunities to pay additional fees during the booking process though, first, to add a hotel:

lux

Then, a car:

car

Entertainment:carrot

A “bundle” including seat assignment, carry-on/checked bags, and airport check-in:

check

Bags:

bags

A confirmation that I didn’t want to pre-purchase any checked bags or carry-on:sure

A chance to choose my seat:

seat

A chance to purchase flight change insurance:

ins

And lastly, a chance to join their “$9 Fare Club” that actually costs more than $9:

fare

 

I said no each time.
24 hours before my flight yesterday, I got an e-mail reminder from Spirit to check-in, reminding me that I could print out my boarding pass at home and avoid paying a $10 fee to print it out at the airport. Yes, I realize this is absurd, but it’s not that hard to print it out in advance. During the online check-in process, they tried again to upsell me on seats, checked baggage, carry-ons, and other packages, and I continued to say no.
This is definitely the best boarding pass I’ve ever had. Who includes a crossword puzzle as in-flight entertainment?!

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Of course, the real challenge was going to be not bringing a carry-on, as I had declined to purchase one in advance for $35, even knowing that I would be charged $50 to add one at the check-in counter, or $100 at the gate! Spirit does however allow one personal item, no bigger than 16x14x12. While most people will use a small backpack, I didn’t have one that small, so I instead decided to use my laptop case. After emptying everything out, I first placed my laptop in it, then a few pants, shirts, and underwear, as well as toiletries and power cords/chargers.


I then rolled up some v-necks and socks, and put them into the front pockets of my hoodie. My pockets were indeed bulging, but I was certainly within their requirements (not to mention I knew I would have access to laundry). I started to wonder why I didn’t pack like this more often….
Of course, I wasn’t out of the woods yet. Spirit also makes money by charging for everything on board, including food and drink, as well as by cramming as many seats as possible into their airline, giving them the least leg room of any domestic airline (28″). While I was pretty confident I could avoid paying any fees, I was less sure if a 6’7″ person like me could tolerate a cross-country flight with so little legroom.
Luckily, thanks to my Citi Prestige card, I had free access to the Air France lounge at Logan Airport, where I not only loaded up on food in advance of the flight:

IMG_20160126_142130
but also on “sleeping medications”:

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I proceeded to the gate, where they very clearly let me know that I would be charged $100 if my carry-on did not fit the stated dimensions:

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Given the stories I’d heard, I was kind of relishing an argument with the gate agents, but they didn’t even make me place my bag in the container to check, and just waved me on through. Success! I pinched myself a little:

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As I boarded the plane, I noticed quite a lot of advertisements on the storage bins, yet another way Spirit keeps their fares low. I don’t know why more airlines don’t do this. I’ll also present this one without comment:

IMG_20160126_154817

Since I didn’t want to pay extra to select my seat, they had assigned it for me, and I was in a window seat, next to a woman from Rhode Island who was flying to Las Vegas just to play slot machines. Right. While I always prefer aisle seat, at least it wasn’t the middle seat. Still, I was less than comfortable:

IMG_20160126_153838
Thankfully, I flagged down a flight attendant and asked if there was something that could be done after takeoff, and much to my surprise, she was more than happy to move me to an exit row seat, which would have cost $50 if I selected it myself. After we were in the air, she motioned me forward, and I settled into my new exit row seat, allowing me more legroom than a regular economy seat on domestic airlines:

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Not too long after, I happily drifted off to sleep, and spent most of the flight sleeping, before waking up to write this post for the remainder of the flight.

Given that I had gone into this flight dreading the experience, I have to say that Spirit exceeded my (admittedly very low) expectations. Of course, they’re certainly not in danger of dethroning JetBlue or Virgin America as my preferred domestic airline (I also did start to get a little hungry and thirsty at the five-hour mark), but I wouldn’t object to flying with them again if one of their many low-fare sales worked for me. (I highly recommend subscribing to their e-mail newsletter regardless of if you ever plan to fly them, solely for the risque marketing, yet another example of how they save money, as it costs them nothing for major newspapers to run stories on their controversial marketing).
Have a Spirit Airlines experience of your own that you’d like to share? Feel free to e-mail me or post in the comments below.

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4 thoughts on “How I beat Spirit Airlines at their own game, and in the process realized I may not need to pack so much

  1. I flew ULCC in Europe in 2008-2009 and hated the experience. I’m surprised that you could fit at all! Even MY knees hit the seat in front of me. I couldn’t imagine being as tall as you are on a ULCC

    Like

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