Get cheap fights with Spirit | Travel and Leisure

Capitalism is a most curious beast. Investors admire the results when, like a beautiful hound, it gracefully bounds across the landscape in pursuit of profit. Consumers hate the results when the only way a mutt can make a profit is by scrimping. So it is that Spirit has revolutionized the budget air travel market. Let?s be quite clear what has happened to the world of low-cost carriers. In the rarified atmosphere of the full-cost legacy airlines, executives pursue the business traveler. Even if it means flying at a loss, these airlines want to project an air of luxury. Spirit is only interested in selling tickets to the folk who want to get where they?re going for the lowest possible price. But, as with all these cost-cutting ventures, there?s a catch.

When you pay the fare for a Spirit seat, that?s all you?re buying. You pay for everything else as you go through the system. Even a drink of water on the plane costs you $3. Because it makes it money by having passengers in those seats, it has more seats in the plane than any other airline. That means significantly less leg room. The prices discourage you from carrying any luggage. Ironically, it doesn?t work. Spirit makes about 30% of its revenue from selling space to carry baggage. Its planes fly more hours a day. There are shorter turn-round times. Yet, when you put this together, Spirit averages 87.5% seat occupancy with each plane making more flights and so it makes more profit from a single airplane than any other airline. This is the Spirit way of offering customers a cheap flight with absolutely no frills at all.

So this is your big choice. Even Delta offers flights with a basic economy fare as it feels the need to compete with the low-cost carriers, but it still has leg room. Does your desire for cheap flights mean you don?t mind being crammed into a plane with everything separately charged? Shopping around and paying a little bit more is something you should be prepared to do if you want a bit more comfort during your journey.

This entry was posted on June 27, 2012, 6:24 pm and is filed under Travel & Leisure. You can follow any responses to this entry through RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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