Spirit Airlines

I can summarize this post for you very simply… This airline should simply rename themselves No-Spirit Airlines! I should have seen this coming when the week before my trip the pilots went on strike. Fortunately, they worked out their labor dispute (read: the pilots wanted more money) 3 days before my flight.

My wife and I arrived at the airport about 1.5 hours before our flight. Usually enough time to check our bag, clear security, get some breakfast, and get on the flight. Not today. I am convinced that the check-in agents were pissed that they did not get pay raise and were taking it out on the customers in line. I am not exaggerating when I say it took these 3 agents over 45 minutes to work through the 20 people in front of me in line. It was obvious from their body language that they just did not care and would get the people through the line when they were good and ready. When were finally done checking in we had about 40 minutes to get to the gate and the agent said, “Go directly to the plane and you might make it!”

After clearing security and getting to the gate we sat down on the plane about 10 minutes before they closed the doors. However, this did not stop the gate agent from telling us how late we were and that “I was about to close the door.” Glad that we made it and we took our seats and settled into the hour flight to Fort Lauderdale.

A quick side note about the actual planes. We took a total of 4 flights on our trip. Every single plane had squeaky armrests. Every time someone raised or lowered an armrest it would wake up everyone on the plane that had dozed off. To top it off, I hadn’t realized that it was possible to put the seats closer together than most airlines already had… It is. I felt Like a giant in their seats. I am barely 5 foot 10 and my knees actually touched the seat in front of me.

The pre-flight safety demonstration was almost comical to watch. One flight attendant read the instructions over the loud speaker while the other flight attendants followed along trying as hard as they could to not have any facial expressions or emotion during the process. This carried over to the service as well. I nicknamed one of the attendants “ROZ” (from Monsters Inc) because of her monotone reading of the safety instructions and overall treatment of the guests on the flight. The others around me were just calling her “Helga”.

In summary. I told my wife that I will never fly Spirit Airlines again. I would rather pay more than deal with lousy service and employees that just don’t care. While cost does matter, I will gladly pay a few more dollars for better service on the way to my destination.

P.S. I am writing this while on a Delta flight while enjoying some complimentary peanuts and drink that I was given by a friendly flight attendant. Not to mention the access to in-flight Internet access.