7 ms·

The dark pattern part comes in with how it's impossible to know if or when any of that stuff is actually included in the ticket price, letting airlines like Spi

The dark pattern part comes in with how it's impossible to know if or when any of that stuff is actually included in the ticket price, letting airlines like Spirit list 'ultra-low' prices that end up the same or more as other tickets once you actually include the basics like 'having luggage' or 'tall people getting enough legroom to physically fit into the seat'.

toymin 3y ago
They still should be way cheaper if you don’t care about the seats and/or only have hand luggage
- tyfon 3y ago
  I wish they would enforce the "hand luggage" size a bit on entry to the plane, last time I flew around 2017 it was a complete shit show in regards to the overhead storage compartments.
  - spacemanspiff01 3y ago
    They do, or at least when I last flew they were charging people who had carryon bags that would not go beneath the seat. (I had a backpack that was slightly oversized, but they did not seem to care that much.)
    - tomschwiha 3y ago
      I guess it depends on how full a flight is. A empty one they don't really care - a full one they care more. But also if its a cheap or "premium" airline.
  - matwood 3y ago
    The budget airlines are pretty strict on this, but the regulars not so much.
fasthands9 3y ago
I feel like this is different than a hotel 'resort fee', which you have no way to decline. I hate flying Spirit but I have flown places before where I only needed a backpack. It may only be 5% of flyers on any route, but there are a lot of airlines to it makes sense that an airline with the model "if you are the rare traveller who doesn't need luggage - we can give you a good price" should exist.
- Symbiote 3y ago
  I think it's probably a fair bit more. It's not unusual for me or my colleagues to do short business trips within Europe with only hand luggage. The cost isn't really relevant, it's mostly the convenience of walking straight off the plane to the train or taxi. Couples can also have one checked bag between two people.
creer 3y ago
For my last flights, all the fees WERE disclosed well in advance. These airlines WANTED to sell these options and were marketing them diligently to the point where you had to fight these unbundled options with a stick. There may be some bad guys but the unbundling seems to result - at least for some airlines - in excellent disclosure. Granted now you have to read through a lot more, and you have to select or ignore all these offers. Including pick specific seats if you do want a lot more space. If anything, I wanted to pay for some more options that were not offered.
- arcticbull 3y ago
  Yep, I'm hella tall, I want to know up front I can pay to reserve a seat with more legroom. And speaking Spirit, Big Front Seat is probably the best value in US domestic aviation. You get a business class seat for a fraction of what the legacies charge.
tempsy 3y ago
ironically airfares are one of the most transparently priced services in the whole country because Obama passed a law that forced them to show the final price with fees and taxes included in the list price when searching pretty much no other good or service in the US can say the same
- thehappypm 3y ago
  Gasoline?
  - tempsy 3y ago
    "Pretty much" implying there are exceptions, yes, but it's not the norm in the US for list prices to be inclusive of all fees and taxes.
- vikingerik 3y ago
  The hidden motivation there is that the government's rule benefits the government. It's easier for them to raise their taxes and fees, by hiding their portion in the total price where they won't get blamed. (You can find the breakdown if you look for it, but who ever bothers.)
- curun1r 3y ago
  They're transparent in the sense that they tell you the cost and it's the same when you checkout 5 minutes later. But calling it "transparently priced" is nonsense. Fares change based on multiple variables. The fact that getting the lowest fare means navigating the permutations of date of travel, date of purchase and location of purchase to find the lowest combination of the three can be maddening. I shouldn't need a VPN and a comprehensive understanding of airline pricing quirks to not get overcharged, often by significant amounts. And it shouldn't be possible to get a lower price by using airline points as an intermediate currency, especially since the aggregators do not list the cost for flights in points.
  - tempsy 3y ago
    not sure what you think should happen. there’s a limited number of seats per flight. if there’s 10 available seats left and 8 suddenly booked why should the last ones be priced the same
brandall10 3y ago
In the case of Spirit and Frontier, this is literally what they're known for. I'd be shocked to meet someone shocked by that. The fact of the matter is more legroom is expensive because it means less seats can be in the cabin. Seat selection is expensive as it limits the combinations of available seats for those who want to sit together. If these things don't matter (I'm a short guy sans family who often does short trips w/ minimal luggage needs), it's great to not have to pay for that.
- AndrewKemendo 3y ago
  And the point is that we should not have to live in a adversarial world like this. It’s not that people don’t know about it it’s not that people are surprised by it The point is that we all think it’s bad and that it should change and so we’re pointing it out
  - atomicfiredoll 3y ago
    I agree that everything shouldn't be as adversarial, but as somebody who's motto for less important/short flights has become "Just throw me in the trash," flying Spirit is fine by me. There's a segment with additional time/flexibility that they appeal to. My concern is when companies go too far in misrepresenting things, especially things that are actually mandatory, and I'm careful because I've come to expect that from most. Edit: One big issue when flying for me the risk of cancellation and not being reimbursed, but I balance that against the ticket cost. Again, I often have some flexibility around staying in a location longer when necessary, which helps inform the carrier I select.
  - sokoloff 3y ago
    You want to travel somewhere and pay as little as possible. The airlines want to take you there for as much as possible. It's inherently adversarial. It used to be the case that everyone bought a bundle that included a bunch of free (not charged at point of use) services. Whether or not you took 3 bags, you paid the same price as someone who did. Whether or not you chose seats all together at time of ticketing, you paid the same as someone who did. With the advent of unbundling (in part driven by online search), consumers could now decide whether taking 3 bags was worth whatever $X the airline proposed to charge. For people who did choose that, they paid more than people who didn't use that service. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-00388-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-00388-5 has some more information about the evolution of unbundling. For me personally, I prefer the unbundled approach; it fits my sense of connecting my costs to my consumption (and probably saves me money in total).
mkipper 3y ago
This seems like a huge stretch of "dark pattern". Ultra low-cost airlines are pretty aggressive in upselling seat / baggage / food / fare class upgrades during the checkout process. It is annoying to have no idea what a ticket will really end up costing when it pops up in Google Flights or whatever, but I don't think that's enough to call it a dark pattern since everything is clearly disclosed before you pay for anything. Airlines are very upfront about all the things you aren't getting with your ticket.
- nickjj 3y ago
  I haven't booked a flight in a while but any situation where I don't know the "final" cost of my ticket before I start the checkout process is a dark pattern in my book. I don't want to see a $100 ticket before I start the checkout process but end up seeing $200 on step 6 / 8 because if I want to sit down and carry a backpack with me it's an extra $100. That forces me to give them my data (I'm interested in a flight from X to Y, creating accounts, my address, etc.) even if I back out of the checkout process due to upsells. Compare that to seeing the final cost ahead of time before entering in any billing details and if you don't agree with the price you can use a competitor with better rates. There's no contest in how much better of an experience and outcome that is for customers.
  - steveBK123 3y ago
    Not knowing if you paid to choose your seat or baggage at the time of checkout is a reading comprehension issue. There's a valid complaint that they all game what's included/excluded at the listing price so they sort better in the fare compare websites. But once you go through the sales funnel, if you read, its very clear what you are getting.
    - nickjj 3y ago
      It's not about reading comprehension or the lack of it. It's saying the list price is $100 but then you have to invest time and provide information during the checkout process only to find out on a much later step that the list price is no longer the price you were given. You're being lied to about the list price which makes it harder to compare prices at a glance and companies are preying on you through a form of "the sunk cost fallacy"[0] in that you're more likely to finish checking out because you've invested so much time already to get to step 6 / 8. [0]: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy
czhu12 3y ago
For what its worth, I often fly from one location to another without luggage (going home to visit parents for instance). its actually my far my most common mode of flight since I visit them 3-4 times a year. I appreciate the fact that I don't have to subsidize other people who need luggage.
skohan 3y ago
Yeah the problem for the consumer is how opaque it is. They're all competing to get the lowest ticket price on the aggregator price, and then claw back a profit either through obtuse language during the checkout process (i.e. insurance which is not clear at all about what it covers) or through unexpected "extra fees" you end up paying between when you get to the airport and when you arrive at your destination. Ryan Air was so bad with the latter that I flat out stopped flying with them. It happened a couple times I had to pay some extra 40 EUR for not reading the fine print carefully enough (i.e. I paid for a cabin bag, but I had to pick up a tag for it at the check-in counter instead of going straight to the gate to avoid an extra fee) Imo unbundling is fine if you are allowed to make informed decisions about what you want or not. If you feel like you've been tricked or robbed after using a product it's probably going a bad way.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- chx 3y ago
  Was but no longer. Indeed if you search enough on flyertalk you could find old posts of mine claiming I wouldn't fly Ryanair if I were paid to do so. But that was before 2018 November when they have changed. I find them one of the best price/fee wise, it's completely clear as what you pay for and what you get. There's no opaque "personal item", no, it's a 40 x 25 x 20 cm bag and the sizer is 42 x 30 x 20cm ensuring anything compliant will really fit. I have yet to find another airline which would so readily disclose the actual sizer dimensions. You want to bring a bigger bag, pay for priority. They only sell a given amount of priority so the bags actually fit on board. You want leg space, here, book an emergency row, yes it has a price but again: you get what you pay for. Of course, you still need to walk to the plane most likely (sometimes you get on a bus) and then walk up the stairs -- not as easy as a legacy airline with jetways for sure. But then again, no legacy airline, not even all legacy airlines together can match the network of Ryanair, it's really something else.
  - skohan 3y ago
    Maybe but they already lost my business for life. You only get so many chances and there are plenty of other airlines.
arcbyte 3y ago
I hear you, but I fly spirit all the time with no add-ons at all. No bags, no seat selection, no wifi, no snacks. I really appreciate the low price and select Spirit over my preferred airline Southwest often for this use case. It's not a dark pattern in my case, even if I do get annoyed those times when I actually have to fly them with bags.
Angostura 3y ago
Or companies like Easyjet that save a couple of inches of the dimensions of (previously fairly standard) carry on luggage, so that when you get to the gate you have to fork out £40 or so to carry it on.
- switch007 3y ago
  Non standardised cabin bag sizes are a nightmare!
SeenNotHeard 3y ago
It's a lot like SEO optimization and the chicanery that goes on there: Airlines know that customers (a) are using ticket comparison sites like Kayak and Google Flights, (b) customers sort by price, from lowest to highest, and (c) as with Internet search results, customers tend to click on links on the first page w/o scrolling. "Unbundling" options permits non-ultra-budget airlines to move toward the top of that list, and then make the money back by offering extras during the checkout. Now, if sites like Google Flights and Kayak would give customers the ability to tick checkboxes saying, "I want a ticket with these unbundled extras," and sort according to the final price, that could potentially re-arrange the field, but who knows? The airlines would probably find another dodge around it.
- goatforce5 3y ago
  Google Flights will allow you to select how many carry-ons and checked bags you have (depending on the route). e.g., on an imaginary trip to Las Vegas, the cheapest carrier changed when I added a checked and carry on bag (and the price difference from a budget carrier to a mainline carrier shrunk considerably).
  - SeenNotHeard 3y ago
    Sure, but I've not seen them offer tick boxes for things like the ability to choose which seat you're in, or complimentary snacks and drinks. ZipAir doesn't even provide free cups of water during its flights. They require all baggage, even carry-on, to be under a certain weight or pay an additional charge. Unbundled options is no longer merely about how many bags you check or carry on. They're monetizing _everything_.
dymk 3y ago
Maybe it's because I use Google Flights, but all of that information is front and center. I've never had to dig for it.
- switch007 3y ago
  Google Flights does not show checked baggage or non-standard seat fees AFAIK It only indirectly shows baggage fees with certain airlines once you select a specific flight when it offers you a range of ticket options (e.g. with BA, it shows Economy Basic / Economy Plus options). Never seen seat fees on Google Flights
  - dymk 3y ago
    I'm not sure what a non-standard seat fee is (it does show prices for seat tiers, such as economy vs first class), but it does show baggage fees for me.
    - switch007 3y ago
      Eg extra leg room seats is what I mean. Ie what the person you replied to meant, what you understood when you said all that information is front and centre… And what did you mean by baggage? Carry on or checked? I’ve never seen it show checked baggage fees. Maybe just estimates in small grey text somewhere at most
boring_twenties 3y ago
I don't think Spirit makes any secret of the fact that carry on bags are not included in the price? And in any case, the flight aggregators I have used lately (namely, Google Flights and Kayak) make it obvious.
sandmn 3y ago
It's usually listed it on their website and not too hard to google. I have to do it for every new airline I use because I'm almost always flying with only carry-on and rules for carry-on can drastically differ between airlines. Only time I flew Spirit it cost me $40 to get from Orlando to LA and it's hard to beat that price. Compared to likes of RyanAir their personal item size is actually quite generous and my usual weekender backpack fit pretty well. I'm avoiding Spirit since that flight mostly because their operations are less reliable than other carriers but that have nothing to do with extra charges.

toymin 3y ago

They still should be way cheaper if you don’t care about the seats and/or only have hand luggage

tyfon 3y ago
I wish they would enforce the "hand luggage" size a bit on entry to the plane, last time I flew around 2017 it was a complete shit show in regards to the overhead storage compartments.
- spacemanspiff01 3y ago
  They do, or at least when I last flew they were charging people who had carryon bags that would not go beneath the seat. (I had a backpack that was slightly oversized, but they did not seem to care that much.)
  - tomschwiha 3y ago
    I guess it depends on how full a flight is. A empty one they don't really care - a full one they care more. But also if its a cheap or "premium" airline.
- matwood 3y ago
  The budget airlines are pretty strict on this, but the regulars not so much.

fasthands9 3y ago

I feel like this is different than a hotel 'resort fee', which you have no way to decline. I hate flying Spirit but I have flown places before where I only needed a backpack. It may only be 5% of flyers on any route, but there are a lot of airlines to it makes sense that an airline with the model "if you are the rare traveller who doesn't need luggage - we can give you a good price" should exist.

Symbiote 3y ago
I think it's probably a fair bit more. It's not unusual for me or my colleagues to do short business trips within Europe with only hand luggage. The cost isn't really relevant, it's mostly the convenience of walking straight off the plane to the train or taxi. Couples can also have one checked bag between two people.

creer 3y ago

For my last flights, all the fees WERE disclosed well in advance. These airlines WANTED to sell these options and were marketing them diligently to the point where you had to fight these unbundled options with a stick. There may be some bad guys but the unbundling seems to result - at least for some airlines - in excellent disclosure. Granted now you have to read through a lot more, and you have to select or ignore all these offers. Including pick specific seats if you do want a lot more space. If anything, I wanted to pay for some more options that were not offered.

arcticbull 3y ago
Yep, I'm hella tall, I want to know up front I can pay to reserve a seat with more legroom. And speaking Spirit, Big Front Seat is probably the best value in US domestic aviation. You get a business class seat for a fraction of what the legacies charge.

tempsy 3y ago

ironically airfares are one of the most transparently priced services in the whole country because Obama passed a law that forced them to show the final price with fees and taxes included in the list price when searching pretty much no other good or service in the US can say the same

thehappypm 3y ago
Gasoline?
- tempsy 3y ago
  "Pretty much" implying there are exceptions, yes, but it's not the norm in the US for list prices to be inclusive of all fees and taxes.
vikingerik 3y ago
The hidden motivation there is that the government's rule benefits the government. It's easier for them to raise their taxes and fees, by hiding their portion in the total price where they won't get blamed. (You can find the breakdown if you look for it, but who ever bothers.)
curun1r 3y ago
They're transparent in the sense that they tell you the cost and it's the same when you checkout 5 minutes later. But calling it "transparently priced" is nonsense. Fares change based on multiple variables. The fact that getting the lowest fare means navigating the permutations of date of travel, date of purchase and location of purchase to find the lowest combination of the three can be maddening. I shouldn't need a VPN and a comprehensive understanding of airline pricing quirks to not get overcharged, often by significant amounts. And it shouldn't be possible to get a lower price by using airline points as an intermediate currency, especially since the aggregators do not list the cost for flights in points.
- tempsy 3y ago
  not sure what you think should happen. there’s a limited number of seats per flight. if there’s 10 available seats left and 8 suddenly booked why should the last ones be priced the same

brandall10 3y ago

In the case of Spirit and Frontier, this is literally what they're known for. I'd be shocked to meet someone shocked by that. The fact of the matter is more legroom is expensive because it means less seats can be in the cabin. Seat selection is expensive as it limits the combinations of available seats for those who want to sit together. If these things don't matter (I'm a short guy sans family who often does short trips w/ minimal luggage needs), it's great to not have to pay for that.

AndrewKemendo 3y ago
And the point is that we should not have to live in a adversarial world like this. It’s not that people don’t know about it it’s not that people are surprised by it The point is that we all think it’s bad and that it should change and so we’re pointing it out
- atomicfiredoll 3y ago
  I agree that everything shouldn't be as adversarial, but as somebody who's motto for less important/short flights has become "Just throw me in the trash," flying Spirit is fine by me. There's a segment with additional time/flexibility that they appeal to. My concern is when companies go too far in misrepresenting things, especially things that are actually mandatory, and I'm careful because I've come to expect that from most. Edit: One big issue when flying for me the risk of cancellation and not being reimbursed, but I balance that against the ticket cost. Again, I often have some flexibility around staying in a location longer when necessary, which helps inform the carrier I select.
- sokoloff 3y ago
  You want to travel somewhere and pay as little as possible. The airlines want to take you there for as much as possible. It's inherently adversarial. It used to be the case that everyone bought a bundle that included a bunch of free (not charged at point of use) services. Whether or not you took 3 bags, you paid the same price as someone who did. Whether or not you chose seats all together at time of ticketing, you paid the same as someone who did. With the advent of unbundling (in part driven by online search), consumers could now decide whether taking 3 bags was worth whatever $X the airline proposed to charge. For people who did choose that, they paid more than people who didn't use that service. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-00388-5 https://link.springer.com/article/10.1057/s41272-022-00388-5 has some more information about the evolution of unbundling. For me personally, I prefer the unbundled approach; it fits my sense of connecting my costs to my consumption (and probably saves me money in total).

mkipper 3y ago

This seems like a huge stretch of "dark pattern". Ultra low-cost airlines are pretty aggressive in upselling seat / baggage / food / fare class upgrades during the checkout process. It is annoying to have no idea what a ticket will really end up costing when it pops up in Google Flights or whatever, but I don't think that's enough to call it a dark pattern since everything is clearly disclosed before you pay for anything. Airlines are very upfront about all the things you aren't getting with your ticket.

nickjj 3y ago
I haven't booked a flight in a while but any situation where I don't know the "final" cost of my ticket before I start the checkout process is a dark pattern in my book. I don't want to see a $100 ticket before I start the checkout process but end up seeing $200 on step 6 / 8 because if I want to sit down and carry a backpack with me it's an extra $100. That forces me to give them my data (I'm interested in a flight from X to Y, creating accounts, my address, etc.) even if I back out of the checkout process due to upsells. Compare that to seeing the final cost ahead of time before entering in any billing details and if you don't agree with the price you can use a competitor with better rates. There's no contest in how much better of an experience and outcome that is for customers.
- steveBK123 3y ago
  Not knowing if you paid to choose your seat or baggage at the time of checkout is a reading comprehension issue. There's a valid complaint that they all game what's included/excluded at the listing price so they sort better in the fare compare websites. But once you go through the sales funnel, if you read, its very clear what you are getting.
  - nickjj 3y ago
    It's not about reading comprehension or the lack of it. It's saying the list price is $100 but then you have to invest time and provide information during the checkout process only to find out on a much later step that the list price is no longer the price you were given. You're being lied to about the list price which makes it harder to compare prices at a glance and companies are preying on you through a form of "the sunk cost fallacy"[0] in that you're more likely to finish checking out because you've invested so much time already to get to step 6 / 8. [0]: https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_cost_fallacy

czhu12 3y ago

For what its worth, I often fly from one location to another without luggage (going home to visit parents for instance). its actually my far my most common mode of flight since I visit them 3-4 times a year. I appreciate the fact that I don't have to subsidize other people who need luggage.

skohan 3y ago

Yeah the problem for the consumer is how opaque it is. They're all competing to get the lowest ticket price on the aggregator price, and then claw back a profit either through obtuse language during the checkout process (i.e. insurance which is not clear at all about what it covers) or through unexpected "extra fees" you end up paying between when you get to the airport and when you arrive at your destination. Ryan Air was so bad with the latter that I flat out stopped flying with them. It happened a couple times I had to pay some extra 40 EUR for not reading the fine print carefully enough (i.e. I paid for a cabin bag, but I had to pick up a tag for it at the check-in counter instead of going straight to the gate to avoid an extra fee) Imo unbundling is fine if you are allowed to make informed decisions about what you want or not. If you feel like you've been tricked or robbed after using a product it's probably going a bad way.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
chx 3y ago
Was but no longer. Indeed if you search enough on flyertalk you could find old posts of mine claiming I wouldn't fly Ryanair if I were paid to do so. But that was before 2018 November when they have changed. I find them one of the best price/fee wise, it's completely clear as what you pay for and what you get. There's no opaque "personal item", no, it's a 40 x 25 x 20 cm bag and the sizer is 42 x 30 x 20cm ensuring anything compliant will really fit. I have yet to find another airline which would so readily disclose the actual sizer dimensions. You want to bring a bigger bag, pay for priority. They only sell a given amount of priority so the bags actually fit on board. You want leg space, here, book an emergency row, yes it has a price but again: you get what you pay for. Of course, you still need to walk to the plane most likely (sometimes you get on a bus) and then walk up the stairs -- not as easy as a legacy airline with jetways for sure. But then again, no legacy airline, not even all legacy airlines together can match the network of Ryanair, it's really something else.
- skohan 3y ago
  Maybe but they already lost my business for life. You only get so many chances and there are plenty of other airlines.

arcbyte 3y ago

I hear you, but I fly spirit all the time with no add-ons at all. No bags, no seat selection, no wifi, no snacks. I really appreciate the low price and select Spirit over my preferred airline Southwest often for this use case. It's not a dark pattern in my case, even if I do get annoyed those times when I actually have to fly them with bags.

Angostura 3y ago

Or companies like Easyjet that save a couple of inches of the dimensions of (previously fairly standard) carry on luggage, so that when you get to the gate you have to fork out £40 or so to carry it on.

switch007 3y ago
Non standardised cabin bag sizes are a nightmare!

SeenNotHeard 3y ago

It's a lot like SEO optimization and the chicanery that goes on there: Airlines know that customers (a) are using ticket comparison sites like Kayak and Google Flights, (b) customers sort by price, from lowest to highest, and (c) as with Internet search results, customers tend to click on links on the first page w/o scrolling. "Unbundling" options permits non-ultra-budget airlines to move toward the top of that list, and then make the money back by offering extras during the checkout. Now, if sites like Google Flights and Kayak would give customers the ability to tick checkboxes saying, "I want a ticket with these unbundled extras," and sort according to the final price, that could potentially re-arrange the field, but who knows? The airlines would probably find another dodge around it.

goatforce5 3y ago
Google Flights will allow you to select how many carry-ons and checked bags you have (depending on the route). e.g., on an imaginary trip to Las Vegas, the cheapest carrier changed when I added a checked and carry on bag (and the price difference from a budget carrier to a mainline carrier shrunk considerably).
- SeenNotHeard 3y ago
  Sure, but I've not seen them offer tick boxes for things like the ability to choose which seat you're in, or complimentary snacks and drinks. ZipAir doesn't even provide free cups of water during its flights. They require all baggage, even carry-on, to be under a certain weight or pay an additional charge. Unbundled options is no longer merely about how many bags you check or carry on. They're monetizing _everything_.

dymk 3y ago

Maybe it's because I use Google Flights, but all of that information is front and center. I've never had to dig for it.

switch007 3y ago
Google Flights does not show checked baggage or non-standard seat fees AFAIK It only indirectly shows baggage fees with certain airlines once you select a specific flight when it offers you a range of ticket options (e.g. with BA, it shows Economy Basic / Economy Plus options). Never seen seat fees on Google Flights
- dymk 3y ago
  I'm not sure what a non-standard seat fee is (it does show prices for seat tiers, such as economy vs first class), but it does show baggage fees for me.
  - switch007 3y ago
    Eg extra leg room seats is what I mean. Ie what the person you replied to meant, what you understood when you said all that information is front and centre… And what did you mean by baggage? Carry on or checked? I’ve never seen it show checked baggage fees. Maybe just estimates in small grey text somewhere at most

boring_twenties 3y ago

I don't think Spirit makes any secret of the fact that carry on bags are not included in the price? And in any case, the flight aggregators I have used lately (namely, Google Flights and Kayak) make it obvious.

sandmn 3y ago

It's usually listed it on their website and not too hard to google. I have to do it for every new airline I use because I'm almost always flying with only carry-on and rules for carry-on can drastically differ between airlines. Only time I flew Spirit it cost me $40 to get from Orlando to LA and it's hard to beat that price. Compared to likes of RyanAir their personal item size is actually quite generous and my usual weekender backpack fit pretty well. I'm avoiding Spirit since that flight mostly because their operations are less reliable than other carriers but that have nothing to do with extra charges.