Tag Archives for spirit airlines.
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.
Spirit Airlines cancelled over a third of its flights on Monday, after having cancelled a similar (though slightly larger) number on Sunday. All day I’ve been hearing about passenger revolts, especially in San Juan, Puerto Rico but also in places like Philadelphia.
In some cases employees… just left. What we’re finding out now is that they may have done this for their safety, to protect them from rioting passengers. And it even appears the airline may have advised them to get out of uniform so they couldn’t be attacked by stranded customers.
In the game of airline versus passenger, there’s years of experience at ‘beating the system’.
The agent declares to her, “You can find another carrier to fly. I’d suggest Spirit.”
An 18 year old woman says she was groped by a male passenger on her Spirit Airlines flight for an hour. She took video! And she says flight attendants told her to “sit down and stay quiet” when she reported it.
American Airlines has experience competing against Spirit Airlines at Dallas – Fort Worth and at their Chicago O’Hare hub. Now they’re being forced to contend with a big buildup in Spirit operations in Miami.
Here’s the game theory for how American Airlines will respond.
According to the grandmother of one of the passengers fighting, “[t]he guy in the black t-shirt and his girlfriend were fighting” after asking that passengers not kick the back of her granddaughter’s seat. There was cursing that escalated to “snatching” a pregnant woman’s hair. That’s when things really got out of control and a flight attendant made an announcement threatening to divert the aircraft.
On a Spirit Airlines flight on Monday from Orlando to New York, a family was kicked off when their two year old, who was eating yogurt, removed their mask. The mother of the two year old girl is seven months’ pregnant, and their other child – traveling with them – is special needs.
Eventually everyone returned to the aircraft – except for the crewmember who made an issue of the mask in the first place.
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 »
