Trip Report: Spirit Airlines, New Orleans to Bogota (August 2019)

Trip Report: Spirit Airlines, New Orleans to Bogota
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I was traveling from New Orleans to Bogota and during the research a couple of options came up: Spirit Airlines, Copa, and jetBlue.  My first inclination was to go with Copa as it flies direct from New Orleans, the seats are generally comfortable, you get a meal plus usually a PTV, and the connection time in Panama was short.  It took some time to confirm my trip, so by the time I looked again the price for Copa went extremely high and the connection time in Panama became longer.  I then looked at jetblue but it had me overnight in Fort Lauderdale so I decided to go with Spirit.  

I was initially hesitant with Spirit since, as a LCC, there is nothing complimentary and everything needs to be paid for thus adding to the overall ticket costs.  When I have previously looked at tickets, by the time I added checked bags or other additional services the price between Spirit and others was not enough to justify flying a LCC; however, this time it was different.  The base price with Spirit was almost $200 lower than Copa, and by the time I added the bags and other services, I was still saving almost $175 - so it is because of these significant cost savings that I choose to fly with Spirit.  I have previously flown with Spirit (check out the review here) so I generally knew what to expect, but my previous flights had always been on short flights of about an hour or less so this was going to be my longest flights yet with Spirit.  


The booking process with Spirit was very easy and transparent - you are able to select your seats and they take you through all the additional services and extras that you can choose to select at the time of booking and see the complete total price before purchasing the ticket.  In addition to the base price, I added a checked bag for both the outbound and return so this added an additional $70.  While Spirit does allow a complimentary carry-on bag, this must fit underneath the seat in front of you.  Carry-on bags that need to be placed in the overhead bin incur a $30 charge each way, so instead of paying about the same price and getting less weight I decided to go with the checked baggage.  NOTE: while the traditional checked baggage allowance is 23kg or 50lbs, most LCC's - including Spirit - have reduced that to 18kg or 40lbs.  

Since nothing is complimentary, you also have to pay for your seats - I have four flights total: New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale, Fort Lauderdale to Bogota, Bogota to Fort Lauderdale, and Fort Lauderdale to New Orleans.  The New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale is a little over an hour so I decided not to pay for seats on that flight, but the flight to Bogota is over 3 hours so I did pay for seats on those flight as I did not want to get stuck in the middle seat.  You could select your seat and pay for extras either during the booking process, afterwards while managing your booking, or when checking in - and Spirit will send you email reminders to do so.  I was able to check-in 24hours prior to my flight, but I did not receive a seat assignment and thus I could not receive a boarding pass - I do not know why Spirit does this as previously when I flew them it did the same thing and so I could only receive my boarding pass after going to the kiosk in the airport - to me that is such a waste of time.  At the airport, I went to the computer screens, followed the prompts, scanned my passport, received my official boarding passes, dropped my luggage off at the baggage drop, went through security and proceeded to my gate.


I had two short-haul flights - New Orleans to Fort Lauderdale and return at about 1hr45m each way - as well as two long-haul flights - Fort Lauderdale to Bogota and return at about 3h35min each way.  Each of the sectors generally operated about the same way so I will provide overall descriptions of the flights.  Each one of my flights was operated by an Airbus A320 and each was laid out in the same way.  The aircraft was in a 3-3 seat configuration with a couple of 'big seats' in the front - with only just extra legroom - and the rest in standard economy seating.  The seat on Spirit is different than a standard economy seat: the seat is a slimline seat, the armrest are narrow to allow for a wider seat width, the seat is already in a prerecline which allows for more legroom space but also means you cannot recline it forward or backward; the seat is not padded well but the padding is standard and it is generally comfortable for the short or longhaul flights; there is no standard tray table that you can pull out but rather a small tray that just folds out; and no standard pocket but a small minimal pocket below the seat.  While it is not a standard seat you would find on most airlines, the seat pitch, comfort, and width are generally better on Spirit than I would find on some mainline carriers.  Also, in the seat pocket were not a lot of materials but just two items - the safety card and the onboard menu which also doubled as the route map and advertisement for the airline credit card (each seat had the menu on the long-haul flights but on the short-haul flights only a couple of seats had the menu). 

The service on each sector of the flight was also the same as well - Spirit does not offer anything complimentary, everything is buy-on-board including water (after a lot of backlash, Spirit started offering a cup of ice complimentary but still no free water).  For the short-haul flights, the service would depend on the time of day as early morning flights the attendants just came around with the menu and asked passengers if they wanted to purchase anything while in the afternoon and evening they came around with the full trolley asking passengers if they wanted to buy anything on board.  For the long-haul flights, the FA's did a passthrough at the beginning of the flight and then again closer to landing offering passengers the option to buy on board.  On both flights, the FA's were always in the cabin either doing their service or coming through collecting trash or quickly responding to calls.  

The service onboard Spirit was very good and actually A LOT better than some of the mainline carriers I have flown with.  The FAs were courteous, they were pleasant, they were visible throughout the cabin, and generally overall provided good customer service.  The planes were also very clean and generally in good and nice shape - again better than some of the mainline carriers I have been on.  Something new that I noticed on Spirit - on both of the short-haul flights, there was a lot of interaction between the crew and the passengers and they had a contest to promote their reward program as well as their credit card.  It was a selling opportunity but the way Spirit did it was interactive and very smart and creative as it provided another way for the airline to interact with passengers in a nice and friendly way; also the give away was a nice touch and provided good pr for Spirit.  

Another item unique to Spirit is their boarding process - they board in groups which is the general standard but they start early and board very quickly so that most passengers are boarded, seated, and ready to go well before the scheduled departure time; however, even though we were all ready to go the boarding doors were not closed until the scheduled departure time.  I do not know if the early boarding is to ensure Spirit has an on-time departure - all of my flights departed on time and arrived early at the gate - but having passengers sit on the plane upto 15-20 minutes waiting to pushback seems like a lot of wasted time.

In the end, it was a standard and good experience with Spirit.  As I had flown with them, I knew what to expect flying a LCC carrier - slimline seats and minimal onboard service; and Spirit delivered on both fronts.  Spirit is also a LCC in that they usually only have one flight a day to that destination and have minimal customer service agents so if something goes wrong, then there is a problem.  Despite all that, Spirit exceeded my expectations with the friendly and courteous crew, clean planes, ontime departure, and generally overall pleasant experience.  I knew what to expect and had prepared myself for the experience (purchased food at the airport and downloaded movies to have something to watch) so I was happy with my experience.  Would Spirit be my first choice - probably not but if the price was significantly different and the flight timings were good then yes, I would choose them again.