Spirit Airlines - bad news

While not directly affecting your portfolio, flying Spirit Airlines is just bad for you, your business and your attitude. Aside from nickel and diming you during the ticket purchase process, their fee structure incents passengers to push the limits of carry on luggage and use airline people-resources at the terminal. Of course, they only provide one dedicated ticket agent to help so it is not pleasant.

I have never spoken to anyone who had a good experience on this loser of an airline. After paying for the ticket, the checked luggage and yes, the online seat reservation, they are the same price or higher than the competition. The seats are not human adult sized and the rows are jammed together so heaven help you if you drop your book in flight. You will never be able to contort enough to pick it up from around your feet.

There was one positive - the flight itself, other than the cramming, was fine and the crew was helpful. It was the rest of the system, from the booking process to the absolutely lousy gate area at LaGuardia (fault both airline and airport) that was a misery. Fort Lauderdale was better.

I get paying for food on the plane. I get paying for excess baggage (but not the first piece). I get paying to reserve seats at the gate/ticket counter but online? Come on, fellas. During my one and only trip I had a family of five. Do you really think there would be five seats together at the gate/ticket window?

So when my young daughter wanted to take a trip with a friend and they tried to hit me for an additional $100 at the ticket counter, I lost it. Supposedly, for that money they walk the child to the plane, give special seats (the passengers already in those seats would love to hear that), give them a snack and then walk them off the plane. I can see my Blackberry using, (age appropriate) club going, advanced class taking, career minded young teenager loving the ID they would make her wear around her neck during the flight. And yeah, I believe (not) they would actually watch over her as they said they would for the C-note. (I was there to take her to the gate and her friend's parent would be at the arrival gate and nowhere was it made clear that there was this extortion to come.)

Let's just say we resolved this matter before the flight took off.

But if you are into aggravation, by all means pretend you got a good deal at Spirit. If you want to be fresh for a meeting or start a family vacation, please - fly JetBlue, Southwest, Delta, American (I have not been on the others in years so I cannot list them, too).