Spirit Airlines - that's a NOPE right?

Spirit was a once in a lifetime experience for me. Literally. Flew once and will never fly again.

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I think it’s so funny people commenting on how bad the seats are when I think they are better than AA :joy: Maybe I was on a new plane? Frontier is like cheap plastic lawn furniture. Even the little ‘armrests’ are sad.

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Planes can vary a lot. When I flew down to Florida a couple years ago to help my parents move, we used United because my bother had vouchers.

Anyhow, United, we had to fly first to Chicago, and then MCO. Both legs if the trip were supposedly the same kind of plane…but the flight to Chicago, the seats were orders of magnitude more comfortable than the seats on the flight to MCO!

I flew them during the pandemic and while the seating was the least amount of space on any airline ever when I flew home I bucked up for extra legroom and it was fine. They were on time for me but I bought my flight last minute so less chance for changes/cancellations I suppose.

Let me explain the seating space issue. It’s not just legroom so it might be only 1" shorter in legroom than a major airline but it wasn’t enough legroom for me to cross my legs. But what really killed me was how narrow the seats were. I’m not a small person but I’m not huge either and I felt like I had to keep my shoulders pressed in the whole flight which is hard on my bad shoulder (I did ligament or tendon damage to it in a triathlon) but in addition the woman sitting next to me was an inch or two into my seating area. She was larger than me but she was by no means obese. So it was honestly the width of the seats that killed me the most. When I paid for the extra legroom on the way home noone sat next to me so I’m not sure those seats are any wider but I was extremely comfortable coming home.

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I’m a pilot for Spirit and would be happy to answer any questions you may have.

With that said, frequency is the biggest factor. It makes recovery from a cancellation a lot harder. Also, our flights have been well over 90% full which also makes rebooking a challenge. We also do not code share with other airlines, so if in the event of a cancellation the odds of getting book on another airline is extremely low.

I always travel first thing in the morning as there is less of a chance of delays. Most of the time if you get the first flight out, the plane arrived the night before.

I will say passenger compliance over all has been pretty good. And this isn’t just a Spirit thing. As someone said earlier in this thread, it’s a people thing. As I like to say, if 10% of the population is a dope, well you have 15-20 dopes on a flight.

Now, about the nickel and dining thing. On the flip side (and this is basically how they want us to explain it), is you are paying for only the services you want. If you aren’t picky about where you sit (much like Basic Economy on Delta and United) and travel light, then Spirit could be great for you.

Also, being a Disney Forum, all of our Flight Attendants have gone through the same customer service training that Disney uses. Our customer satisfaction rates have increased. We had a CEO change a couple of years ago and I believe he is making some good changes.

Also, according to Flight Aware (a great fight tracking site), cancellations for yesterday were at 13 flights or 1% of our departures.

And let’s be honest about airlines everyone likes to complain about every one of them.

When you consider all the moving pieces of an airline, air traffic control, and weather it’s amazing that this business works as well as it does.

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Also, I would like to take a moment to address the seat width issue. The diameter of the fuselage of an airplane hasn’t changed at all in the last 50 years. Unless airlines remove a seat in a row, the seat width isn’t changing.

The Boeing 737 which Southwest flies, has been around since 1967 with a fuselage based on the Boeing 707, manufactured in 1957 has a width of of 12 feet 4 inches.

The Airbus A320 which Spirit flies and has been around since 1988, has a fuselage width of 13 feet.

Long story short, people are just bigger.

Now about legroom, I agree that it can be tight, but I’ve also have flown on just about every domestic airline. If you are in basic economy, they are all pretty close.

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I’ve flown Spirit. Definitely no frills but if you go into it expecting that then you’ll be fine.

The seats don’t feel any smaller to me (I’ve heard people complain about that) and my flights were on time.

It’s not my first choice (usually fly AA) but I have no complaints.

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This is extremely helpful information @Neibert12 Thank you for sharing!

I guess I’ll have to review what the frequency of flights might be to/from MCO to/from MHT to ascertain risk of being stranded. That’s the main thing that came to my mind out of everything everyone (and you) have here discussed. I can’t risk - for lots of reasons - getting stuck for 5 days anywhere.

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Awesome info! Thanks for sharing. I always have a FlightAware tab open and absolutely love that site. I live under a CLT flight path and it’s fun to hear a plane and be able to see what it is and where it’s coming from. There are a few that have very distinct sounds and are so regular that I can almost time my day by them.

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Welcome! I’m always happy to answer any airline/flying questions.

Also, when I first read the announcement that we are flying to MHT, I think you were at the end of last trip, maybe were delayed going through BWI. I immediately thought Spirit may be a good option for you in the future, as it seems that we have directs flights to MCO from most of our cities.

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Facts have no place here!

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Same here - had the worst experience ever in my life on Spirit and I will NEVER fly them again

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Oh do I hate AA but that’s because I have regularly dealt with the DFW hub. I will say I have never met airline employees with more hate in their heart than the AA employees at DFW. They must treat them very very badly. I have found they aren’t as bad other places but every single really mean employee I’ve ever met worked for AA so my personal anecdotal experiences have driven me to fly AA as a last resort. I prefer Frontier, Spirit and Allegiant to AA.

1" of legroom apparently makes a huge difference because it can mean the difference between being able to cross my legs or not and after flying to NZ without it I refused to go to China without paying extra for it because it was absolutely miserable on an overnight flight. That couple of inches you pay for means the difference between extreme edema and mild edema for me on those long flights. Apparently just being able to stretch your legs out two inches is important.

Maybe the width isn’t any different on Spirit officially but I’ve not experienced that lack of shoulder room on my other recent flights including Frontier. I’m not making that up so something is different about the seat configuration?

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I recently switched from SW to JetBlue out of Logan. It was not an issue when then just changed my flights to/from Disney since they have so many direct flights. I didn’t like a later bump so I moved my flight to the first nonstop of the day.

Yeah I think we are leaning JetBlue/BOS. It just sucks monkey nuts because I am literally 2 miles from the MHT

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I am totally going to start using that phrase.

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I say it entirely far too often. Usually I say “balls” though. Somehow that felt like it was crossing a line.

Yeah I don’t get it either, it just did

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I prefer MHT but it has been a struggle. I was able to book a couple of SW flights for my son and his girlfriend but a September flight was 2 to 3 times the amount of points that I have used in the past.

We flew Spirit to and from Disneyland back at the beginning of the month (SDF-LAX).
It was a 4 hr flight with littles, so I can’t really judge on how the flight was because it was miserable for me HA!
But I had not problems with the airline specifically. We did not face any changes or delays, but I feel like all the airlines are very fickle right now on changes. SDF is not a huge airport, so any change in flight can be devastating as far as timing goes for us, regardless of airline.
Good luck!

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