Quote:
Originally Posted by chillrob
Well, you can believe what you like, I just know Spirit has much lower prices than any other airline, even the other discount carriers (like SWA, which has 2 checked bags and snacks included). It is cheaper than any other airline I have ever seen, before or after any recent changes.
Yes, they do; no one is arguing that point. However, the fact that Spirit is a low-cost, no frills airline that is cheaper than any other airline is completely irrelevant to anything that is being discussed in this thread.
Quote:
Originally Posted by chillrob
And regardless of the motives behind the changes, I think the recent unbundling of airline services is a positive change, and the bundling of things I don't want into a required resort fee is a negative one.
Coincidentally, I can give you a real-world example of the airlines obfuscation of advertised prices that is directly on point with mandatory hotel services charges. Earlier this morning, I booked a r/t flight for my wife from Miami to Cleveland for travel from Xmas to New Year's. I went to Kayak and found a very good fare (especially for relatively last-minute flights) on American Airlines. AA advertised a nonstop round-trip fare of $257.
I clicked on the flights and Kayak took me directly to aa.com to complete the booking. Once there, the same $257 price came up as I started to put in the passenger information and select the seats for the flight. The outbound flight was fine, but when I got to the return segment, there were no "free" seats available. As you may not know since you only book Spirit, many of the major carriers have started charging extra for seats in the bulkhead, emergency exit rows, and aisle & window seats in the front of the plane (and by front, I don't mean first class). The only seats available on this flight were aisle and window seats in the first 12 rows of the coach cabin. An aisle seat incurred an additional cost of $58 and a window was $53. There were no other options. My wife wanted an aisle so I clicked on a specific seat and the cost of the fare went from $257 to $315.
Now, $315 is still a decent price for booking a flight 2 days away, but I was still a little pissed that I wasn't advised until very late in the booking process that there was this added $58 fee that I could not escape. If my wife wanted to fly on this flight, she was going to have to pay this extra-added non-advertised fee.
Sound familiar?