I literally did that one day. DH’s dad is friends with quite a character, the most rednecky of rednecks. He owns a bus on which we all went for a ride one night, careening down these twisty country roads. In lawn chairs, with a cooler of beer on ice. My God, I don’t even know where we ended up, somewhere north of Dallas, at his house, a bonafide mansion.The guy’s wealthy, he just doesn’t like rules. I still don’t know if that thing even had headlights, I had my eyes shut most of the time. We must have broken a hundred laws in half an hour.
I know what a Chinook and a Skycrane sound like, unfortunately.
Why? They are just starting to fly up here. I know nothing at all about them but was excited to have another option.
I personally pass on the budget airlines- few fly here anyway. And one loooong economy flight from Copenhagen to Denver killed it for me. Never again. I just shell out the first class airfare and stop worrying about it. I can cut my vacation short, pinch pennies in other ways or use miles, I really don’t care what it takes, but I’m never EVER doing that again. The good thing is that prices don’t fluctuate much so I don’t have to live on MatrixITA to find the best fare, either. Simplifies things a lot.
I guess I’m showing my age- I have been buying my own airfare since I was 19 & going to college- but airfare really is relatively cheap compared to how it was thirty or forty years ago. Back then everyone paid the equivalent of first class for a less safe and reliable plane ride. Of course economy class service was better then. I’m just more sanguine about paying more now when I look back at what I paid then, in real dollars.
They eff with their schedules entirely too much of late. They shouldn’t be selling flights they won’t keep. And it’s enough lately that we as consumers know it’s rather unlikely that come day of travel we are actually on the flight we originally booked.
Add to that almost zero nonstops to anywhere from my market anymore and it’s just becoming more work than it’s worth
The great thing about SW coming to your area is that it will put downward price pressure on the other airlines. Even if you never take SW, it’s good for consumers to have options.
Oh, that doesn’t sound good. Yeah, reliability ought to be sort of a base offering in this day and age.
I have to connect to get almost anywhere. To get to some places (looking at you, Buffalo) it’s two connections. Before the pandemic it was only one.
But the pandemic seems to have shaken things up- the business-destination flights have decreased and the vacation destination flights have increased (hence ours here have increased). I think SW is flying from here to LA.
They are definitely leaning hard on the pandemic excuse. Which I realize there is some validity to. It’s just feeling like it’s a little too convenient these days.
Pre-COVID I found SW to be the most reliable of all the airlines when it came to keeping to their schedules and not moving/cancelling flights. That has not been the case since last March though. We can hope that they return to being more reliable when we get to the other side of all this.
Yes, the price pressure will be much appreciated. That’s part of my calculation for upgrades, too. It’s always been expensive to fly from here, it doesn’t matter what airline I take. Another couple hundred for first class doesn’t add that much. And the flights are long so it’s worth it.
We will see how it all shakes out. Somehow, it never seems to work in favor of the consumer. If they don’t bring me back my dinner on real plates there will be hell to pay.
We flew one way on Spirit (home to MSP from LAX) a few years ago. It was fine (which is how I would describe nearly every economy/basic class domestic flight in the last 10 years). Exactly as advertised - no frills, pay for what you want. The kids loved the bright yellow plane!
I think the cancellation/stranded thing would be my only concern.
Sounds just like Frontier. Their basic route from my area was 1 crack of dawn and 1 mid-morning to MCO, and 1 late afternoon and 1 early evening coming back. Sounds perfect right? Until one week prior to my trip they reversed everything which basically shorted me a day at WDW. The kicker was that they also sold my pre-paid extra cost stretched row 1 seats out from underneath me and thought nothing of it.
So….I just wanted to share that Spirit had some operational difficulties over the weekend and it seems to be crossing over to the beginning of this week. I’m being told this was due to some weather in different parts of our system but I’m also thinking it has to do with staffing issues. We seem to be short staffed with ground crew as well as gate/ticket agents.
July was shaping up to be Spirit’s busiest July ever l, and August is going to be busier than July.
I believe we are experiencing some growing pains as well as staffing issues. Most of the ground staff and gate agents are outsourced to a contractor that also serve other airlines. These companies are notoriously cut-throat (to maintain the airlines contract) which also means they don’t pay the best. If I had to guess, they are having trouble retaining as well as hiring.
With that said, I would wait to purchase tickets (if you book on Spirit) until the fall (I believe the marathon is in January?). The operational problems should be worked out by then, and you will get a better idea on our performance. Prices also don’t seem to change that much until much closer to your travel dates.
Summer and Spring Break are our busiest times, travel is usually less hectic in the fall and winter.
Do you have any way to tell if this is limited to just Spirit? With Delta surging, I’m curious if Covid-related absences are part of the issue, so it could impact airline travel in general.
I really didn’t consider that the delta variant could be a factor in it. It very well could be as Fort Lauderdale is our largest city by departures and Orlando is in the top five. That would be interesting to know but probably difficult to find out.
I really think airlines, like other service industries are having difficulty hiring and retaining workers.
