Spirit Airlines is in bankruptcy for the second time in less than a year. A lot of ink has been spilled over the reasons why, but I do think a part of it is something simple everyone is missing.
- They’re a low cost carrier, but they’ve been facing rising costs. Some of that is pandemic wage increases. That reduces their cost advantage against other airlines. They’ve also lost cost discipline, going so far as to open an extravant new campus just before heading to the courthouse the first time.
- They haven’t had the products people have wanted to buy. Increasingly people have been willing to spend more for a differentiated product. They’ve wanted to fly to Europe, too. Spirit doesn’t fly long haul and they don’t have a true premium product. Even where they brand the Big Front Seat now as first class, they are still Spirit Airlines.
- Other airlines are competing better. They used to be loathe to match Spirit’s fares, out of concern that the people who are going to buy their tickets anyway would just spend less for them. But those customers don’t want basic economy, so they offer Spirit-style fares as basic economy, and some customers choose United, Delta and American instead of Spirit now but they don’t undercut the revenue they earn from everyone else in the process.
None of that’s controversial. But something much simpler is also at play. They are just too hard to do business with. I tried to buy Spirit Airlines tickets just now and it’s just not worth the hassle.
- The website isn’t letting me log in. I want to log in so the ticket I buy credits to my Free Spirit account.
- I am trying to buy travel for my family. To search for a child, they make you enter the child’s date of birth. But on the passenger information page, it transfers that date of birth to the child one day off and the field isn’t editable.
- If I search for adults only, to avoid having Spirit enter the wrong date of birth for my daughter, then when I enter her correct date of birth on the passenger information page it tells me she’s a child, I didn’t search that way, so I must start the whole search over.
Other times when I select my flights and try to buy them I just get:
And nevermind that you also can’t book first class (Big Front Seat) on their website or using their mobile app if you have a lap infant, because not all of their seats are certified for lap infants and their own systems can’t tell the difference.
I guess I could try booking over the phone, but that’s also the point: their cash register doesn’t work.
Spirit Airlines has a revenue problem, and maybe even just a small part of that problem is that it’s too hard to give them revenue.
It’s happening!!! (Gary, they’re toast.) Not good. Bad for competition. Bad for workers. Bad for consumers. Bad.
Spirit and Frontier’s websites are awful. The best website by far is Southwest, very simple
A lot of the domestic routes where I’ve gone with a super-budget airline, there was a choice – Spirit, Frontier and then one other line Sun Country or Allegiant. Often, Spirit had the superior schedule option, but Frontier would make a seat assignment and carry on a smaller upcharge, like $20. However, most of the time it was the godawful website. Try again, come back later, start over … So even if I managed to complete the booking, I had zero confidence that it would show up correctly on their end. So if Spirit is reading this – GARY IS 100% RIGHT!
Their website and mobile app are clunky. And god forbid you need any customer service which is woefully inadequate.
I used reservation credit to buy a ticket last night using the web browser on my iPad. This morning I booked a mileage ticket using the website through Microsoft Edge. Had no issues at all.
No, the website doesn’t know which specific tail number is operating your flight. It won’t let you select Big Front Seat with a lap infant if there are not seat assignments available in row 2 for your whole party. If only row 1 is available, it is inhibited until check-in and final aircraft assignment is known. Or would you rather book, get row 1, then on day of departure find out an A321ceo and neo were swapped and now unless the people in row 2 want to swap with you, you’re going to coach?
I just tried 3 mock bookings with a lap infant, had no date of birth issues, and it allowed me to select a seat in row 2 only. On the flight where it wouldn’t let me book Spirit First, I could book it without a lap infant and saw only 1A and 1F were available.
I feel like they grew too quick too fast. Also them scrapping the no change fee policy really made me lose interest.
I’m still trying to find a Delta economy fare that is equal to Spirit. A lot has been written about this. Somebody help me out.
@ Gary — Their website/app has always sucked. You just learn how it works and wonder why they dont fix it. It can’t be that expensive to fix some of the basic issues.
Even DL and AS websites go flakey at times. So that might be a sort of red herring.
But it is sad to see the wheels fall off any business, as slow motion decline accelerates rapidly.
We have looked into all the issues you have stated in your article and after numerous attempts to replicate we are unable to find any deficiencies. By any chance are you using a “anti tracking” browser? Sometimes these browsers are too restrictive and prohibit the coding to run as designed. We are in the process of implementing a combined reservation system/network with a soon to be announced partnership. Try using google or safari browser.
Please reach out to customer service directly if you’re still having issues.
So, if I read this correctly, I can’t book a flight on their website. But what if I don’t want to book a flight?
@ AlanZ — You CAN book a flight on their website. Gary couldn’t book what he wanted on their website.
Granted, I fly solo without children, but I have never had a problem booking a ticket on the website or app … or at the ticket counter in the airport.
Where their personnel have always been polite and helpful.
There is no “first class” on Spirit. At the most their entire experience is Tenth Class. The sooner they shut down & assets sold off the better overall for the entire USA industry. The industry as a whole needs to rebalance itself or re-regulation will reappear. Consumers will only take so much abuse. There is no need for Spirit to exist at all as the Big US5 offer basic economy fares. American Airlines are you listening? Folks speak with their wallets.
The Asiana website is also partially broken. I have been trying to view and download the recent changes to my upcoming flight and the website throws an error. Some parts still work so I know that the ticket is still in there.
If you hitch a ride on the back of a chicken truck you should not expect much.
You would know broken websites wouldn’t you?
POS systems should be at the top of a companies list. You can’t buy tickets on Air India’s website without using chrome (firefox just errored out/hangs)… I think most of the outsourced Indian web devs (which everyone seems to be using) only test on chrome nowadays.
@George Nathan Romey — How else are we gon get to the Piggly Wiggly?! *bagock* (chicken noise)
I’ve been programming websites for 25 years now. It’s one of those things where, when you’re practiced (and opinionated) you notice things even more.
I can’t tell you how many technical glitches there are on Spirit. First, don’t even try to load that thing with an ad-blocker enabled. It breaks. Some may say that is the user’s fault, but, considering it’s not a site that should be generating revenue off ads, this is really poor programming. It’s pretty easy to make a website that doesn’t break even if someone has an ad blocker, as most of the drop-in JS pieces of revenue generating ad services are optional.
But let’s get to the booking process… While I would argue Gary’s particular comments may be user-side and weren’t really that thoroughly vetted, I am 100% in agreement with Gary. I switched to Spirit from United for almost all my travel for 6 months, flew them about 30 times. The user experience is awful. Here are some examples:
* The Spirit app & website encourage you to check-in 24 hours in advance. But you shouldn’t. That’s because, by checking in, you lose the ability to change a flight or cancel a flight. Turns out that if you wait until the last minute to check-in, you can still change and cancel up until check-in. Thus, checking in actually only serves the purpose to lock you out of those features. You gain absolutely no other benefit – not even discounted bags (they’re still available at a discount 2 hours before via check-in)
* If you use a credit and rebook a flight, then have to make a change or cancel THAT second booking, you can’t use the credit anymore online. You have to call, which is always a nightmare and slow.
* On most websites, if you start a search and want to compare it to another search, so you open a second window for a second search, it is not uncommon that you can no longer click around on the first search because the site only uses session cookies which support one search at a time total. That said, Spirit goes an extra annoying step – it will pop-up a warning on the second window that you have a search open elsewhere and will forcibly close or redirect the other page/window. So even if you’re smart enough to know not to actually try to proceed in two windows at a time, you can’t even do it.
* If you want to see what the all-in price is going to be on a flight with all options, you can’t unless you’re willing to fill in all the passenger details first. Annoying.
* Don’t even get me started on the Savings Club. It turns out if you’re a savings club member, and search for saver reward flights, Spirit will HIDE the regularly priced flights that don’t have a saver fare. This will make you think they’re not available or sold-out. But actually, if you logout, then search for an award seat, click that you want the regular priced award seat, and THEN login at checkout, you CAN buy the seat at the regular price. This is an AWFUL experience and ridiculous. You are actually penalizing people who paid you for discounts, while simultaneously not offering the discount!
* You can’t manage a round-trip booking once the first leg has been taken (so always book one-way legs).
* You can’t cancel a check-in if you decide to go, even if it’s a refundable fare. You have to call.
* The system is supposed to generate WiFi codes for certain seats. It doesn’t always do that. And sometimes, it generates codes, and you can still use them even if you end up not taking the flight.
* If you don’t write down the voucher number you get on a future flight credit, poof, it’s basically gone forever. You can call and try to get them to find it for you but usually they can’t find it.
* If you end up with a future flight credit under $1, you can’t use it. When you get to the payment page and enter the voucher number, it informs you of what you have left, but then doesn’t let you apply it because it says the value has to be >$1 to use. No biggie. The real problem here is you may not realize there’s only a little bit left on a voucher when you had tried to use it. But guess what, you added it to the screen, now you’re screwed – you also can’t REMOVE the voucher once added to the page. Which means you can no longer buy the ticket. You have to start your ENTIRE search for a flight over to get it to clear the shopping cart and let you re-apply purchase options.
* I am still trying to figure out how to get someone to actually change my last name on my Spirit Rewards account after I got married. They have a page full of instructions but they never actually do it.
* As Gary mentioned, I randomly get logged out or get an error just after logging into my Spirit Rewards account. And no, I don’t have an ad blocker. It’s the same error he pictured above – super generic, no instructions or information on how to resolve. Nothing to relay to anyone to actually fix the problem.
* If, during any of the above, you have to restart, Spirit insists on showing you an ad in a modal box. So you end up seeing the ad like 6 times when trying to make a booking. It’s just yet another minor but stupid annoying thing on the site.
* There are now 5 different types of seats you can buy, and who the heck knows what they actually are anymore. Big Front, Premium, Preferred Standard, Exit Row, Standard. Depending on what plane you get (newer redone or older) the experiences in these seats is always totally different. I’ve been on flights where the Big Front seats are awful (and broken frankly) and the Exit Row would have been cheaper and better, and then the next flight the reverse is true.
* If you have one of the certificates you get with the credit card (like the $100 off companion fare), you can’t combine it with any credits. This may sound minor to some, but if you fly a lot and have a constantly changing schedule, you may end up with a bunch of little credit vouchers. But also, if you don’t fly with a companion that often, when you do, the companion fare only counts toward the base fare, not all the add-ons. So using $100 off takes forever on the voucher, and there’s a good chance you’re going to want to try to use a credit for yourself on one of those companion tickets at the same time because of it. Basically, they just make it hard to use the vouchers and the credits. They’re pretty much useless.
And in all this, I was Spirit Gold with a hefty credit card spend. It had some good perks in the beginning, but they’ve made them so hard to use. Then they changed the seating chart, and the perks became kind of dumb. Basically you can book exit row for free but all the other new premium seats they have are basically not available unless you pay for them, at which point the perks are not useful because they’re included. So basically your choice is no Gold perks, exit row w/ Gold perks, or pay for the upgraded experience at which point Gold is useless. For example, you can’t change flights for free anymore when you’re Gold and buy their value fare.
I could go on, but you know what’s sad? I’d be happy to offer this advice to the airline directly, but all I can get is agents reading a script in the Philippines who can’t seem to actually relay anything to management ever. I’ve tried. It’s a waste of time.
Back to United I go.
This is what happens when there’s nobody left to answer the phone. Spirit has most likely eliminated the majority of its IT staff and assumes that nobody needs to monitor its website while it’s in bankruptcy and awaiting a suitor to buy it. Testing engineers were likely the first to go, either by choice or through termination. When a ship is sinking, nobody waits around to see what will happen. The ensuing exodus can have numerous consequences, including a severe lack of investment in IT infrastructure and new projects to raise money.