A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about booking a Spirit Airlines flight. The previous post outlined why I made this decision despite Spirit’s reputation. I had also never flown Spirit in the past, and I chose to avoid Spirit based on their reputation. This is a review of my recent flying experience with Spirit Airlines to Mexico. I hope this review gives you an idea of what it’s like to fly with Spirit. Ideally, this will give you the information you need to understand if flying with Spirit in the future is right for you.
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Check-In Process
Checking in with Spirit starts 24-hours ahead of your flight departure. At this point, you should be familiar with Spirit’s business model. But if you aren’t, their check-in process will reinforce their pay for every little thing mentality. Throughout the online check-in, Spirit will attempt to sell many extras.
Travelers will be prompted to buy bags immediately upon starting the check-in process. The prompt says the “Best time to buy bags is now to get the lowest price.” While this is true for any time going forward from check-in, remember that the real best time to buy bags is during the original booking process.
The next prompt during check-in is to select a seat. The seats aren’t actually any cheaper at this point than when you first purchased the ticket. Spirit also tries to get customers to buy a seat with the scary prompt, “Get Random Seats”. Check the seat map before purchasing if you have concerns about your group being separated. If you are traveling as a group and there are still a large number of seats available, don’t worry about purchasing a specific seat. On the other hand, if there are limited seats left, your group has a higher chance of being split up. Determine if it is advantageous to you to secure seats together based on that information. I generally press my luck in those situations to avoid seat selection fees.
Continuing Spirit’s barrage of add-ons, the next prompts ask if you want to purchase shortcut security or shortcut boarding. I wouldn’t select either of them.
Finally, travelers arrive at the last upsell prompt from Spirit during the check-in process. At this point, Spirit is trying to sell travel insurance. While everyone should make their own determination on travel insurance, the value of insurance at the point of check-in is significantly decreased. Travel insurance covers sickness (that isn’t an existing condition at the time of purchase), flight delays that cause you to miss non-refundable activities, or any other unforeseen event that impacts your ability to complete the trip as planned. While it is certainly possible for something to happen in the next 24 hours, it is fairly unlikely that any of those events would be unexpected and thus covered by the insurance. Many credit cards also provide coverage as part of their benefits so check before you pay extra for this coverage.
This completes the check-in process. Be sure to print your boarding pass now or have it available on your phone. Spirit charges a fee to print your boarding pass at the airport. Notice a trend?
Check-In Experience
That’s enough about the check-in process. How about the actual day of flying experience?
While you can prepare for the “nickel and diming” during the booking and check-in process. It is significantly more difficult to prepare and compensate for a poor flying experience. Overall, the check-in process was generally uneventful at the airport. There were a couple of takeaways though that I want to share to hopefully make your experience better.
First, Spirit attracts a large number of infrequent travelers. This leads to situations like where passengers regularly have overweight bags. In one specific case, a lady in front of us in line was trying to check a 77 lb. bag (the limit for most bags on Spirit is 40 lbs.). Similar situations arise when new passengers don’t understand the flying process, what they can bring on a plane, or any number of the other rules involved with flying. While none of these turned into the typical frustrated passenger that can be seen in many YouTube videos, it does mean the check-in process goes slower for all those in the line.
Second, Spirit’s business model rubs many people the wrong way when they get to the airport and don’t understand the fees. Similar to the above, this can slow down the process for everyone in line and can lead to irate passengers. While this didn’t happen in my recent Spirit flying experience, I know several people personally who have told me stories of this happening.
The customer service agents who I dealt with on my recent trip were great. Knowing how they have to deal with the above circumstances regularly made me appreciative of their service.
Flight
The next part of the Spirit flying experience is the actual flight. Airbus A320neo operated the route I flew. The airplane looked very new, was well-taken care of, and was very clean for what was its first route of the day. I was impressed by all of this when flying as I had ideas of a rundown aircraft that weren’t cared for in my head. While I never questioned the safety of the aircraft, I thought a low-cost carrier would fly older airplanes, finishes would be cheaper, and the staff might not care for them as well as other airlines would. This was about as far from the truth as possible.
The ultra-low-cost carrier status of Spirit was visible (and felt) in the seat. Spirit uses an ultra slim-line seat that is noticeably thinner than a traditional airline seat. While not unbearable for multiple hours, the seat is definitely less comfortable than what you would find on Southwest or Delta. The padding on the seat is fairly slim meaning that you felt most of the plastic seat frame underneath. The closest analogy to this seat experience that I can think of is the small plastic chairs you might have gotten in kindergarten. Take this simple plastic chair, make it adult-sized, and put a ½ inch thick pad on top of it and you have Spirit’s seat.
Legroom was another area that I thought would have a noticeable difference from other carriers. Spirit advertises a seat pitch of 28 inches for all their regular seats. Seat pitch is the measurement from a point on an airplane seat to the exact same point on another seat in the row behind it. For comparison, Southwest provides 31 – 33 inches of seat pitch, Delta provides 31 – 32 inches of pitch, and American Airlines provides 30 inches of seat pitch. I was worried about this number since I am 6′ 2″.
In reality, the legroom actually turned out to be similar to that on other airlines. I could not tell a noticeable difference between the Spirit flight legroom and a similar flight on Southwest. The legroom available is actually comparable despite the difference in seat pitch measurements. This is because seat pitch is an approximate measure of legroom plus seat thickness. Spirit cut down on their seat thickness as mentioned above. Therefore, a seat pitch measurement can be smaller while having the exact same amount of legroom.
As expected, there was no in-flight snack or beverage service. Because I was expecting this, I had brought a drink and snack from the airport prior to boarding. It’s annoying that you can’t even get water while flying, but Spirit is upfront about extra costs so I can’t fault them for it. Just be prepared if you fly Spirit for this reality. Also, notice the very small tray table shown above. It’s large enough for a drink and snack, but don’t expect to fit your laptop on this table.
Wrap-Up
So the real bottom-line question is, “Would I fly Spirit again?” The answer to that question is, “Sure, under the right circumstances.” The Spirit flight turned out better than I expected. It also turned out much better than I would have believed from the anecdotal accounts from acquaintances and friends. That being said, I was well-prepared for the fees, rules, and business model. I also had set my expectations pretty low so it should have been easy for Spirit to exceed them.
To fully answer the question, I need to explain what the “right circumstances” are under which I would fly Spirit again. It comes down to both a cost and routing question in my mind. First, if I’m saving at least $50 on the all-in price (including ticket, bags, expected fees, etc.), I would start to consider flying Spirit. The longer the flight that I am looking at, the more I would be looking to save before flying Spirit. This is because the biggest issue to me was seat comfort. The longer I sit in that seat, the more I want to save over the competition.
Second, if Spirit has a nonstop routing and their competitors require a stop to get to my destination, I might consider Spirit. In that last scenario, I would hope I would save a significant amount of money and over an hour in time. If everything is equal in flight options and cost, Spirit isn’t going to win. But as an ultra-low-cost carrier, this often isn’t the case. Therefore, I could see myself flying Spirit again at some point in the future.
