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If Everyone Hates Spirit Airlines, How Is It Making So Much Money?
- kjhughes 7y agoBecause people purchasing airfare prioritize price over service. Money quote: “Businesses that look at what people say,” [Ben Baldanza, Spirit CEO] argues, “don’t do as well as businesses that look at what people actually do.”
- Wowfunhappy 7y agoSure, but often "it's so cheap" leads to brand satisfaction despite lousy quality. I know people who really like Walmart and Dollar Tree.
- conductr 7y agoI know a lot of people who love Spirit. They find ways to avoid the fees and just want low prices
- dontbenebby 7y agoSouthwest is often cheaper than United or AA for certain destinations (especially LAS and DEN) and I've yet to have a negative experience.
- daxfohl 7y ago...and Google and Facebook. Even if they claim not to.
- pankajdoharey 7y agoAbsolutely, RyanAir is pretty much the most hated airline in Europe yet they are also the cheapest. I mean if you buy a ticket 2 weeks in advance, you can get a ticket from London to Paris for £9. Thats less than the price of a Pizza.
- Matheus28 7y agoBut at that cost, are they really making money? It seems that they'd be losing money if you don't get caught by one of their hidden fees.
- gh02t 7y agoProbably filling seats on unpopular routes that they would have to fly anyway. Perhaps in a similar situation to what's described in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8XZriAdB1g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X8XZriAdB1g , where an airline was flying empty planes to hold their slot at Heathrow.
- staticautomatic 7y agoWould they have to take a loss on the fuel?
- dmoy 7y agoSure, but that pales compared to losing a juicy timeslot on the runway. Some of those literally sell for 8 figures. You can run a lot of empty flights at that rate.
- heelix 7y agoThe other thing is they charge. for. every. single. thing... Want a carry on? Pick a seat? The price for these types of airlines have just about every nicety set up as a DLC, if you will. The base line ticket is cheap. Once you get all the extras, things are closer. When folks search for price - they get the raw price.
- gruez 7y ago> The price for these types of airlines have just about every nicety set up as a DLC, if you will DLC? Not really. It's literally not something you download. Microtransactions is a more apt term.
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- xivzgrev 7y agoThis. Did not need to read article.
- daxfohl 7y agoYup, compare Google and ddg, or Facebook and every decentralized network. I had a business partner years ago that was light years better than me. And I think this sentence might just sum it up.
- majos 7y agoWell, here are the key bits: > Branding experts are forever telling us that this scenario simply isn’t possible; eventually a negative popular image will crush your business. If that’s the case, how do we explain Spirit? > Sure, there were lots of complaints, but Spirit consistently delivered on its low-cost promise, and that’s why customers kept coming. “Businesses that look at what people say,” he argues, “don’t do as well as businesses that look at what people actually do.” As for why Spirit is an easy punch-line, I think a lot of it is the name. There’s not much to go on with American Airlines, Delta, Southwest, United, etc., but Spirit sets up such a contrast between the name (noble, eternal, incorporeal!) and the experience (no-frills, optimized for cost, and extremely corporeal!). It’s nice irony.
- gok 7y agoWhat a senseless question. You could ask the same thing about Walmart or dollar stores, or why most people watch YouTube with ads. Just because I feel it's the best move to save money by using your services doesn't mean I don't also feel your service sucks.
- majos 7y agoIf it’s unnecessary and you consume it (YouTube with ads), doesn’t this imply that it doesn’t suck? Dollar Store, sure, sometimes people need to buy cheap food. But using YouTube is optional.
- redis_mlc 7y ago> But using YouTube is optional. No, for a lot of people, Youtube is the new TV. Congrats to Google on a great investment.
- leetcrew 7y ago> If it’s unnecessary and you consume it (YouTube with ads), doesn’t this imply that it doesn’t suck? in the common parlance, it is possible for something to "suck" and still be a good value. in my opinion, the experience of shopping at walmart sucks. I have a hard time finding things, I have a hard time finding employees to help me find things, and the thing itself is usually of poor quality. and when it's time to pay, I'll probably be waiting for one of the two cashiers to ring up two full carts worth of items for the person in front of me. as much as I hate it, I still go there if I need to buy a bunch of stuff where I don't care about quality. if something is free, it only needs to provide an infinitesimal amount of positive utility to be a good value. I also hate google play music, but it's the best of several bad options to play music for free in my car.
- gok 7y agoIs leisure travel necessary?
- burnJS 7y agoI'd take spirit on a short trip where I need only a small carry on. I just don't generally need flights that fit that scenario, especially on the east coast where I prefer the comfort and ease of Amtrak. I hate airports. I wish this country had high speed rail.
- tyingq 7y agoIf your small carry on is larger than 18x14x8 inches, it's an additional ~$35 to ~$60, depending on when/where you pay. This is how they make their money.
- MiroF 7y agoEven with this rule, it is generally cheaper than commercial flights from other carriers, except (in my experience) for extremely low price United flights that have the same stipulation.
- tyingq 7y agoOh, yes...should have mentioned the 28" seat pitch. That's the other way they make money. Other airlines have 30"-32" in their economy seats.
- tatersolid 7y agoThis can’t be a significant factor. The seats per plane allowed by pitch difference is about 11% (at maximum using 28" vs 32") seats in a two-aisle plane. Spirit base fares are often less than half what a United or even Southwest are charging for same route.
- tyingq 7y ago11% more seats is a pretty big deal in a low margin business. Comparing base fares is hard when the product is so different, and Spirit isn't uniformly half the cost either. Say it's uniformly 20 to 30 percent lower. Seat pitch and bag fees (carry-on/checked) might account for most of that. Also see things like refundability.
- glofish 7y agoPeople HATE that they have to pay for every additional service, but LOVE the original low (and overall lower) price. When they travel only nickel-and-diming is visible. But then, when they plan a new trip, they remember that overall it was not so bad and apparently decide it was worth it.
- riantogo 7y agoThere is a fix for this. Charge the max services fee on top of ticket price and credit back for services not used. Didn’t bring a check-in? Here is $50. Not gonna eat? Keep this $20. Suddenly now they are not nickel-and-diming. They are handing out money.
- leetcrew 7y agoI'm not sure the psychology works out that way. price sensitive customers probably don't want to let you hold onto an extra $75 of their cash from the time they make the reservation until they actually fly.
- gruez 7y agoTime value of money of a $200 plane ticket at federal funds rate (for half a year) is like what, $1.5?
- leetcrew 7y agoit's not about the lost opportunity to make an investment so much as tightening the margin for stuff like paying rent, utilities, and credit card bills. $75 isn't enough to make or break my budget, but it's still a lot to have tied up over a service I'm planning not to use. if you're the type of person to aggressively optimize travel for price, it could be a meaningful sum.
- glofish 7y agoPlus it is well established that we are less price-sensitive once the money left our pocket. Most people would end up using more services. Hence even instinctively feels like a much worse deal even if tying up that money would not impact them directly.
- protomyth 7y agoIts not like a lot of airlines have good reputations flying out of the same places as Spirit. For a certain type of travel (one carryon, not super long flight), its actually ok. They suck but the lower price compensates for the difference in suck between them and some of the others. They're the burner phone of airlines.
- neckardt 7y agoI love spirit. If I can save $50 on a flight that would normally cost $200, that means I can visit my girlfriend 4 times instead of 3 for the same price. I'm not particularly tall so there's no change in comfort for me. I wish they had more routes though, been handing a good percentage of my annual salary to delta.
- amyjess 7y agoI'm assuming you travel super light, then? Because Spirit's baggage fees are so high that it'll more than make up the difference in ticket prices. One reason why I prefer Southwest so much is because I can get both my carry-ons and two checked bags with the ticket price... which is still lower than any of the legacy carriers. (which is a reason why I'm going to be so upset when the MAX is put back in service and I won't be able to fly Southwest anymore)
- tim58 7y agoWhat are you really doing with two carry-ons and two checked bags? If I'm staying for less than 4 days I can fit everything I need in one backpack. With a backpack and a carry-on I can bring everything I'd want for weeks.
- amyjess 7y agoFor me, it breaks down like this: * My purse counts as a carryon. I don't go anywhere without it. * My other carryon is my backpack, which contains my electronics. I have my Surface, my headphones (which are very large padded cup models... I have sensitive ears and can't wear earbuds or small hard things), and a variety of chargers and spare batteries. I intend to use at least some of these on the flight itself. And I also stuff the side pockets with snacks for me to munch on during the flight (usually red/yellow stuffed Twizzlers). * I have a suitcase for my clothing. I don't really like wearing the same clothes every day, so yes I pack multiple changes of clothes. * I have a duffel bag for all my toiletries. Makeup, shampoo & conditioner, hand cream (I tend to travel in late fall/winter, and the cold fucks up the skin on the backs of my hands for some reason), shaving equipment, pads, flat iron, etc. Some of these can't go into a carryon because of bullshit TSA rules. And on one of the trips I made last year, I also brought a number of toys for my niece and nephews (three kids, two toys for each kid, and not all of them were terribly small), which I had to basically play Tetris with to get them to fit in my luggage. I think they ended up being distributed between my backpack, suitcase, and duffel bag.
- crooked-v 7y agoA key thing to keep in mind with air travel customers is that it's nigh-impossible to effectively search and filter on anything past price and maybe number of free bags. Thus, you get people buying seats with no leg room... because travel search sites lump everything together, and without researching every single flight in the list, there's no way to actually see how much leg room there is in advance.
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoThere's no guarantee for the type of aircraft that will service your flight. You can check the schedule, but an Ops team may switch out if any operational exception (bad weather, equipment malfunction) occurs.
- taurath 7y agoSo you fly spirit once, just once basically. You understand very quickly what you're getting, and don't fly it again unless price is your #1 concern. For the vast majority of people flying, price is #1. Several hundred dollars is not an "extra" expense that most of americans can easily afford.
- catalogia 7y agoBecause "Everyone hates Spirit Airlines" obviously isn't true, despite the impression the author may have gotten from mass media and social media, neither of which are representative of the full population. If you have a gut feeling ('everybody hates Spirit') and hard facts ('Spirit is profitable and has loads of customers') that seem to contradict each other, maybe just maybe you should consider the possibility that your gut feeling is just flat wrong.
- ApolloFortyNine 7y agoMy most recent Spirit flight was $200 cheaper than any other airline. I have a bag that's the exact personal item dimensions, and generally pack very light as it is, so the restrictions don't affect me at all. And honestly, I think largely because no one can recline, the seats are not that uncomfortable. I've been on more uncomfortable British Airways flights (they still fly some extremely old 747s on their North American routes). So I save $200 to be slightly more uncomfortable for 2 hours, on a piece of my journey that simply has to happen. No one flies just for fun, people have somewhere they're trying to be.
- microtherion 7y ago> And honestly, I think largely because no one can recline, the seats are not that uncomfortable. This. As far as I'm concerned, non-reclinable seats in economy are a FEATURE: I lose more comfort from the seat in front of me reclining, than I gain from my seat reclining.
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- Simulacra 7y agoBecause of low income people who need to get places and are used to being treated poorly. Sometimes you have no choice.
- sct202 7y agoSpirit has been mostly fine but you should price in the cost of eventually getting stranded by them in the flight cost. I've flown them at least a dozen times and been stranded once where the next flight would be 4 days later so I had to suck it up and buy a flight back on Southwest.
- chx 7y agoBecause noone wants to pay. We are still flying the same speed as we did fifty years ago. Imagine for a second that you could fly from London to Sydney in ten hours (that's the Concorde speed on a route over Panama City so that almost all of the flight is over a sea to avoid any problems with sonic booms) but a ticket would be 15 000 dollars. Noone developed that plane.
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