Why I Flew My Family to New York in Spirit’s First Class — And Why It Beat United, Delta And American

We took a family trip to New York last weekend, and Spirit’s first class ended up beating American, Delta, and United on price, seat availability, and convenience. It wasn’t even close. For this route, with two kids, Spirit turned out to be the only option that actually made sense. Think I’m crazy? Allow me to explain.

There are a number of airlines that fly from Austin to the New York area non-stop: American, Delta, United and Spirit. JetBlue no longer offers the flight, unfortunately.

But when we decided to make the trip about six weeks ago,

• first class on American, Delta and United was super expensive (generally over $900 per person each way!). That wasn’t going to make any sense for us.

• None of these airlines had extra legroom coach seats available together. Plus, on United and Delta I’d have to pay extra for those. United gets over $80 apiece in each direction. (Traveling solo with Delta my Flying Blue Gold status gets free exit row seats, but with a 7-year old and 1-year old we’re not exit row eligible.)

• Spirit Airlines ‘first class’, on the other hand, was cheaper than extra legroom coach on the legacy airlines.

Now, actually booking these tickets was a challenge. Spirit Airlines is an ultra-low cost carrier and that extends to their booking technology. They don’t make it easy to give them money and it took me numerous failed attempts on their website and app before finally enduring long hold times to speak to an agent (who finally waived the telephone booking fee for the trouble). But we got Austin – Newark done in both directions.

And I was strangely looking forward to this flight, in much the same way the aviation highlight of my summer Venice and Nice trip was getting to fly Volotea.

Spirit Airlines wound up with first class seats because they were too cheap to remove them when they first converted their business model to become an ultra-low cost carrier. I’ve flown the product before back when it was one of the great values in travel. It was often not much of an upcharge at all.

Now they market it as a separate cabin – actual first class, and not just The Big Front Seat – because they sell it as a bundle. First class now includes a checked bag, inflight drinks, and a snack. Wifi is free for first class passengers.

Of course there aren’t any ovens in the galleys. There are no meals. There’s no seat back entertainment screens or streaming content and there’s no seat power. But it was fine!

There was no wait to check-in when we arrived at the airport. I didn’t check in online because we’d be checking bags, so there was no reason to bother. We walked up and they happily tagged our bags, although it seemed to take an inordinately long time. Although there are name tags on all of our bags, they insisted that paper Spirit Airlines tags get handwritten as well.

Security on Friday morning at the Austin airport was a surprising breeze. The PreCheck line was long-ish but not terrible. There were only a couple of people queued for CLEAR. The Analogic scanner broke down while our bags were going through, and that caused a bit of a wait. But we were there in plenty of time, and made it over to gate 9 for our flight in plenty of time.

Spirit called for wheelchair parents and for uniformed military first, though nobody boarded. A middle aged man walked up to board, though, and he appeared to be an air marshal. Then first class and elites were called. Big Front Seat used to be group 2 boarding. No longer, it’s now group one.

The first thing that struck me were the snazzy newer seat covers. They looked kind of sharp, although these are the same seats which you can easily see.

The second thing that struck me is that flight attendants don’t do predeparture beverages. That’s fine, I rarely get them in first class on American Airlines, but it seems like an easy way they might have differentiated the service and made it ‘seem’ first class. I did get a drink once we were up in the air, though.

A few other minor notes:

• The first class ‘cabin’ (there’s no cabin divider) had 7 passengers for the 8 seats at takeoff, but someone moved up inflight.

• Wifi if free for first class passengers with a voucher that you’re emailed, so make sure you have access to the email without wifi to log into the wifi.

• Snack basket consisted of breakfast bar, cinnamon bun, pop chips, popcorn and milano cookies for our 10:30 a.m. departure.

  

  

• First class passengers still pay for other snacks – and without the discount offered to ‘premium economy’ passengers. At least that was the case on my outbound. On the return flight attendants provided buy on board items complimentary in addition to items from the snack basket.

  

  

  

• Flight attendants were mostly joking with each other during the flight, and seemed a bit annoyed to be asked for things like extra drinks when they weren’t doing formal service passes around the cabin.

• Spirit’s announcements claim they have the fastest internet among U.S. commercial airlines. They very much do not.

Maybe less minor, maybe the most Spirit thing ever about this first class flight was the lavatory. Boy, it was rough. No no seat covers there. Smelled, too.

Growing up I never thought I’d fly first class – ever. I was a frequent flyer between the coasts as a kid, since my parents were divorced and I lived in New York while my dad was in California. I’d board the plane and remember thinking,

• I’d never have the kind of money needed to fly up front
  
• Even if I did, who would pay so much extra for a little bit of extra comfort over just a few hours? (Though I had no idea how much extra it actually cost.)

This was the early 1980s and I didn’t know about the AAdvantage program yet. The original AAdvantage charged 12,000 miles for a first class upgrade with no capacity controls. If there was a first class seat for sale, you could have it for points. Paid first class seats back then, though, were extremely expensive. Overall domestic first class might have been filled 10% with paying passengers.

By the time I’d graduated college and started flying for work I quickly earned Premier status with United (the equivalent now of MileagePlus Silver) and was excited for upgrades. My first flight as a Premier was Washington Dulles to Los Angeles on a Thursday afternoon at 5 p.m. I did not clear the upgrade. But my Sunday return, on board a Boeing 777, was upgraded and it was over 4 hours of pure euphoria. I bought a copy of the Sunday New York Times and relaxed in a business class recliner. Lunch was a large shrimp appetizer dusted with almonds followed by a steak. I had a couple of cocktails. And I didn’t want the flight to end.

After that I was hooked. I was excited to fly and to be upgraded. I did everything I could – connecting instead of non-stops, hunting for widebodies domestically, flying at noon on a Wednesday – to get that upgrade. And the first time I managed to fly ‘first class’ rather than business on a long flight I got an ice cream sundae!

That ‘first first’ moment though is something I’ll never forget. Spirit is a fabulous reminder for me to stay grounded!

I’ve flown most of the world’s great international first class products, and I tend to see business class as ‘transportation’. But most people fly coach, and most never see a forward cabin. When they do, it’s like a dream. And Spirit first class is a dream for them, too!