I've blogged before about my willingness to pay for quality, though usually this hasn't applied to air travel. Until now. I started flying Spirit years ago when they first emerged as a no frills airline catering to the golfing crowd. Living somewhat near Myrtle Beach, I could catch a very cheap flight back to PA at a moment's notice. Never had any problems...the staff was efficient and polite, everything went smoothly.
It seems that they've changed their business model a bit. It is now (officially) "You only pay for the services you want." For instance, a checked bag costs $5-10, a coke/water/coffee is $3, etc. That's fine with me...I rarely check bags, and always bring a bottle of water on the plane. B
ut what killed me was their totally fucked up check-in system. Their online check-in doesn't work and they don't have kiosks at the terminal, which means that EVERYONE must go to the ticketing counter to get a boarding pass to get through security. At DCA, this meant a 1 hour wait in line (for the only Spirit flight that was departing that morning). At FLL it meant a line that stretched outside the terminal, down the sidewalk, and over to the next terminal entrance. No wonder...it literally took at least 10min for the desk attendant to check me in. For some reason she had to get print-outs from the back room. I guess they cut costs by only having 1 printer for everyone to share. A true measure of their inefficiency was the fact that all other terminals in the airport were absolutely empty. Not Spirit. Their antiquated systems more than quadrupled the time needed to get from drop-off to the boarding gate.So my advice: pay the extra $100, fly Delta, US Air, Jet Blue, etc...its well worth it.
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