Spirit Airlines not able to cope with delayed flights
 

I've now made two trips with Spirit Air... that makes two trips with missed connections resulting in delays more than 24 hours, and Spirit customer service could hardly care less.

Sure they will offer to rebook your flight, but they have such a small network and limited schedule that the majority of passengers had to wait until the following day, and spend a whole day and night at the airport.

Came back on a Sunday afternoon flight from Costa Rica, we were delayed by 5 hours due a mechanical problem and missed the only connecting flight of the day from Fort Lauderdale to Atlanta and pretty much every other destination. Dozens of irate passengers cursing and shouting when customer service agents informed them they could only get them a flight late Monday night, so they would have to miss work on Monday. Customer service agents not really too interested in helping, after all it's not *their* fault the plane had mechanical problems and couldn't leave on time...

Other passengers in line had similar stories. Several passengers flying from Chicago to Puerto Rica (via FLL) said their pilot in Chicago arrived late -- they had already boarded when the pilot finally decided to show up, so they missed their connection in FLL and had to spend a whole day and night at the airport until the following evening's flight. On my first trip with Spirit, the plane leaving Atlanta was delayed coming in from Myrtle Beach, so we couldn't leave on time and pretty much everybody with a connection in FLL had to spend the night there and continue towards their final destination the following day. Spirit's network is so fragile that it's just not capable of dealing with such events.

As somebody remarked, they sometimes have good prices (although Spirit will nickel and dime you for every imaginable item), but when something goes wrong... it *really* goes wrong and you're pretty much stuck. I've had delays on other airlines, but they have usually been able to find a solution fairly quickly. When something goes wrong with Spirit, the whole system comes crumbling down and passengers are pretty much stranded. When you fly with Spirit, be fully prepared to arrive a day later than you planned; it's happened on 100% of my trips so far. It's hard to justify flying with Spirit in the future.

This is a classic case of consumers not knowing what they are buying. Airline travel is very confusing, so do some research before you buy. Certain "bargain" airlines are a good price, but come with restrictions too large if anything go wrong. Carriers such as Spirit and Southwest are good value, but reroute misconnected passengers with no one. It is a risk you take when you book. Cheap is great, but not any value if you can't get where you are going in a timely manner. My advice is to pay a little more, but have the assurance that most major carriers will openly book each other in case of misconnections.

The idea that major carriers are any better these days than Southwest for example is a fallacy. Delta in particular, but all the majors charge outrageous prices for minimal protection and service. You are right however that people need to educate themselves as to what is covered by the ticket.

I don't believe that major carriers are better, just different. Every airline has something to offer. Better is defined differently by every traveler. Thank you for agreeing, knowledge is the key.