Spirit Airline is the worst.
 

It is one thing for an airline to treat it's passengers with disregard and customer service follow suite, but it is another for an airline to cancel the last flight of the day, then advise all passengers that it is 'weather related' and NO compensation, hotel, meal, ticket refund, ticket transfer or expenses for missed connections would be given, when ALL the other airlines continued their service to that very same destination without hinderance from the 'weather'. Well this is exactly what Spirit did to all of it's passengers flying from Fort Lauderdale to Nassau, Bahamas on Monday, July 20th. First they told us that the flight was cancelled, then they said it was back on and then once again it was cancelled. This was around 4 PM and earlier that afternoon there were thunderstorms, but Jet Blue, Bahamasair and American Airlines all continued their services to Nassau and in fact Spirit continued their service from Fort Lauderdale into Freeport, which is not far away from Nassau. Spirit gave an abrupt announcement that the flight was cancelled and folks would have to fly out on the next Spirit flight, the next day. Spirit also stated that because it was 'weather' related there would be no refunds, hotel, meals etc... and Spirit would not even try to get any of the passengers onto another airline that day. I went over to Jet Blue, Bahamasair and American Airlines and they all were flying to Nassau, but Spirit would not give me a refund so that i could get out on one of those other airlines, and my bigger question was, why if it were weather related, those other airlines did not cancel their flights?
Spirit owes it's passengers a better explanation and compensation especially for those who had to pay for a hotel night. I hope the officials in charge of airlines will investigate because I am not too sure 'weather' really did play a part in the cancellation and Spirit just used that to get out of paying the very passengers it disregarded.

Same story different person... read here and here

I'm surprised they even used the pretense of "weather" because their Contract of Carriage doesn't differentiate. The information is in the above linked posts but here are the relevant clauses from Spirit's COC:

As you can clearly see if Spirit cancels a flight all they owe you nothing except rescheduling you on the next available Spirit flight. For a refund you will probably need to file in small claims court.

Good luck.

We take the position that the carrier owes a passenger a refund (of any unused flights) if the carrier cancels the flight and the passenger does not accept the reaccommodation.

You are absolutely correct and I'm sorry if the information I posted was mis-leading. If I had just read down further in the COC I would have found this:

Spirit themselves are misleading on this aspect. They will try anything to get a passenger to take a reaccomodation instead of providing the refund. Their agents will let the passenger bring up the option of a refund.

Of course that's the policy. Would you expect any business to WANT to refund the money?

No Rudy, but on the other hand I have a basic expectation that airlines will obey the law and the law is that the airline should inform the passenger of their rights in these circumstances. I know airline employees post 911 are drunk on power and think they are above the law, but sadly... THEY ARE NOT!

I don't expect them to want to refund the money, but they are REQUIRED to in some situations and they tend to hide behind the non-refunability of their tickets and insinuate that the passenger can not get a full refund if they do not accept the reaccomodation.

If the DOT is aware of this tactic then I would expect we'll be
reading about a substantial fine sometime in the near future?

re-accommodation...2c's&2m's :)