Tag Archives for spirit airlines.
Three days ago video was posted to TikTok of a woman – dubbed Karen – out on the tarmac after arriving late to the gate for her Spirit Airlines flight. We’ve all been there, running to make a connection or arriving to the airport late, and showing up at the gate with the boarding door just having closed. There’s no defeat quite like it.
This woman wasn’t going to take matters lying down. If the plane is leaving without you, just run after it.
Los Angeles is surprisingly lightly served from Memphis, with Delta offering non-daily service and Allegiant flying the route. There’s no United or American flights. Memphis – Las Vegas has limited service, from Allegiant and Frontier. And Memphis – Orlando has very limited service from Southwest and Frontier. All are routes where Spirit has a shot. And, for their strategy, if the fares are low enough people will come from all over.
Mid-year Spirit Airlines announced a big expansion in Miami, an American Airlines hub, becoming the second largest airline there. Traditionally they had stuck with lower-cost Fort Lauderdale.
Now they’re making a run at American’s hub in Philadelphia. They’ve just announced 7 new routes, increased service to another and flights to 20 total destinations. Spirit and Frontier together are the next two largest airlines in Philadelphia after American.
This flight attendant would have fit in well in the old days when Spirit Airlines marketing was led by a 13 year old buy current Frontier Airlines CEO Barry Biffle… and they’d run Anthony Weiner sales, MILF sales (“Many Islands, Low Fares”) and declared during the Gulf oil spill that you should check out the (suntan) oil on their beaches.
A passenger on board a Spirit Airlines flight departing South Florida on Saturday evening seemed to have more than one too many to drink prior to departure, according to others on the aircraft. She attacked two members of the cabin crew and then when she was arrested on arrival in Nashville yelled at police officers to shoot her.
Spirit has worked hard to improve its operational reliability in recent years. Before the pandemic they weren’t just cheap, they were frequently on-time. That reputation may have been undermined, but it looks like they may be working towards a new reputation – one that takes care of customers when flights delay?
Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza told an interesting story about trying to figure out whether a new route would be profitable.
In normal times airlines have great data – required and reported by the federal government – on a sample of US ticket purchases that show the number of people flying a given route and what price. But there are cases where this data isn’t available, and they had to look at… alternative sources of data to decide whether or not a route made sense.
Here’s why it doesn’t surprise me at all that Spirit Airlines says they were conned out of about a million dollars by two employees and a vendor working in cahoots.
On Tuesday a woman on a Spirit Airlines flight couldn’t wait to smoke until she got out of the airport. She couldn’t even wait until she’d gotten out of the plane. So while her aircraft taxied to its gate in Fort Lauderdale she lit up at her seat. Of course this happened on a Spirit Airlines flight. In Fort Lauderdale.
United Airlines recovered from the PR hit that followed passenger David Dao being dragged off of one of their flights and being beaten, and the carrier’s CEO apologizing for this incident inconvenience other passengers. Spirit is better positioned with its customer base than United was to move forward.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
