Spirit Airlines: The. Worst. Airline. Ever.

Today, a cautionary tale from the Repeat And Referral Sales Prevention Department.

The lesson is: You can attract a lot of new customers, clients, members or patients with low prices, but if your product and/or service sucks, you had better be exceptionally good at attracting A LOT of new buyers – because you won’t get anyone to buy from you again or encourage anyone else to.

In fact, if you execute this Incredibly Stupid Strategy really well, you’ll even ignite a firestorm of hate about your company and even lose some potential new customers you may otherwise have bamboozled into giving you their money even once.

Our story begins innocently enough…

I was recently invited to join the Board of Directors of the Financial Policy Council (“FPC”), a results- and action-oriented organization dedicated to its mission to influence decision-makers and to educate the public about both the dangers of the will-destroying and self-esteem crushing “The-role-of-government-is-to-provide-for-the-well-being-of-its-citizens” mindset that has America heading squarely in the wrong direction, and the powerful attitudes of personal freedom and self-reliance that built the U.S. into The Greatest Country In The History Of The World, but that have become demonized over the past 100 years or so, to our nation’s tremendous detriment.

More on that in upcoming posts; now back to today’s story…

When I was informed by the FPC’s President, international financial expert Ziad Abdelnour, that I would be officially introduced to my fellow board members at an upcoming board meeting in New York City, I immediately called my travel agent to have him make my flight and hotel arrangements.

When got his voicemail message that he was out of the office and would be back soon, I said to myself, “Heck – it’s just a one-day trip to New York (where I lived for the first 18 years of my life and return to often for both business and pleasure) – how tough can it be for me to just go to an online travel website and book it myself?”

Famous last words…

I did a quick scan of the available flights around the time I wanted to travel, and one airline’s offer CLEARLY stood out from all of the others as The Obvious Choice, because its fare was about 10% lower than any other. That airline? The infamous rip-off machine known as Spirit Airlines.

Now, for some reason, I had never heard of this despicable excuse for an airline, even though it’s been merrily mistreating travelers for the past seven years, ever since the inception of its current strategy to be what they call an “Ultra Low Cost Carrier” (not to mention the only 2-star airline in American history).

Well, I’ve heard of them now.

I arrived at O’Hare airport bright and early for my 5:54am flight – even before the security screening area opened for business. Little did I know that my hate affair with Spirit Airlines was about to begin…

I handed my boarding pass and ID to the TSA agent as I entered the screening area, and was immediately alerted to the absurd and alarming fact that Spirit charges its passengers an obscene $100 fee for each carry-on bag checked at the gate. Therefore, the agent gently suggested that I go to the Spirit counter and check my bag there – for a mere $45 (or just the low-low fee of $50 if I chose to carry my bag onto the plane instead) – even though it weighed less than 20 pounds, containing little more than a suit and a pair of shoes.

WHAT???

Suddenly, that “10% lower” fare wasn’t such a bargain after all. In fact, I had now already paid more for a ticket on this worst-of-all-possible-airlines than I would have on any other carrier.

But wait! There’s more…

I called my beautiful wife Michele to let off some steam about how I fell for the Spirit Airlines scam by not reading the fine print when I first booked my flight. She reminded me that I had told her just the night before, when I went to the SpiritAir.com website to check-in online, how amazed I was that they wanted me to pay anywhere from $10 to $50 in fees to choose my seat for the flight in advance. That’s right – Spirit Airlines even charges an additional fee to select the worst seat on one of their World’s Worst Airline’s flights!

Just on principle (*NOTE: That’s code for “temporarily forgetting that successful people are RESULTS-oriented, and don’t let their emotions get the best of them”), I declined to play their game and fall for their fee-gouging attempt.

You guessed it. I was “randomly” assigned seat 17B – a dreaded middle seat.

But wait! It gets worse!

Upon conducting a few quick Google searches while waiting at the gate*, I discovered that Spirit Air is well-known for jamming as many rows as in-humanely possible into every one of their planes, resulting in the least leg room between each row of non-reclining seats of any U.S. airline by about 20% (Spirit packs in 178 passengers on an A320 Airbus, compared to only 150 for other carriers).

*NOTE: Here are just a couple of the results Google found when I searched for “Spirit Air Sucks”:

1. “Consumer Reports said Spirit’s rating was among the lowest of any company it has ever rated.”
2. “Spirit was the only American-based carrier in Business Insider’s analysis of the world’s worst airlines.”

Now where was I? Oh, yeah…

So not only was I in a middle seat, but I also spent the entire three-hour flight with my knees bumping right up against the hard plastic tray table in front of me – AND with the knees of the guy behind me jabbing into the small of my back.

I have a tendency to become claustrophobic, so I literally “pulled the wool over my own eyes” (I was wearing a wool hat due to the near-freezing Chicago end-of-March temperature) and did my best to drift off into sleep.
Somehow I made it through to the ridiculously bumpy landing in New York.

I gulped down some of the water I had brought on board, avoiding the $4 fee Spirit Airlines charges its passengers who want a drink of water, and made a beeline for the plane’s exit.

As I entered the airport terminal after The Worst Flight Ever (and felt an urge to kiss the ground), I was reminded of the sage advice a very wise mentor gave me decades ago, when he urged me to

Go ahead and make every mistake. But make it just once.”

Now I have two questions for you, dear reader…

1. Are YOU making sure to provide an excellent product and/or service experience for YOUR customers, clients, members or patients?

And, just out of misery-loves-company curiosity…

2. Have you ever had the misfortune of giving Spirit Airlines your money?

I’d LOVE to read your response in a comment below.