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Let's Buy Spirit Air

letsbuyspiritair.com

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Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#331

Post by fragmede »

SmellTheGlove wrote: post #256
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like you're living in a different universe then. I will literally never fly Spirit (well, neither will anyone else) nor Frontier ever, I loath the experiences I've had on them so much. First, as someone with relatively long thighs, I literally don't fit in their sardine can seats. But more relevant to most people, while things may be OK if everything goes perfectly and nothing is delayed or cancelled, you are…

Yup, came here to say this. Once you're on the plane and its in the air, Spirit and Frontier are like pretty much every other domestic airline. There's slight variation in terms of whether you get a whole can of coke for free or not. If you're taller than me, the 28" of seat pitch vs say 31" on delta may make a difference, but I'm only 5'9". I still avoided them like the plague because the legacy carriers are selling…

> Once you're on the plane and its in the air, Spirit and Frontier are like pretty much every other domestic airline.

Yes, if you ignore the part where things are different, it's basically the same. Trouble is, those differences do meaningfully make a difference. There's no objective measure for misery and happiness, but flying Jsx is nicer than Spirit. You can put a dollar value on misery, that's why one's so much more expensive than the other.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#332

Post by rob74 »

Symbiote wrote: post #300
thrownthatway wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one I’m not from the US and have never flown any of the airlines being discussed here. I’ve never heard of this, is there some YouTube videos you can point me to.

I can't find videos. The cabin crew stand at the front of the plane, and either play a recording or make an announcement saying you can buy a lottery scratchcard for €2 or whatever, with some of the money going to charity. They then walk down the plane "scratchards? scratchcards?" They repeat this with a collection for charity (no scratchcard), a promoted drink, and some sort of food. I think this is mostly unique to…

Yes, Ryanair is the undisputed leader in finding new creative ways to take advantage of their captive audience and saving a few pennies here and there (e.g. I'm not aware of other low-cost carriers that have advertising on the overhead bins or put the safety instructions on seat-back stickers because it's marginally cheaper than using cards for that). Not to mention only flying from airports in the middle of nowhere to save airport fees.

...while other low-cost carriers try to distinguish themselves by not being quite as bad as Ryanair.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#333

Post by ho_schi »

Reading from Wikipedia Spirit sounds like a horrible low-cost Airline like Ryanair. Why should we rescue something which hurts employees and passengers?

If it would be TWA or PanAm my reaction would be positive.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#334

Post by the_gipsy »

gruez wrote: post #102
gizmo686 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why does any of this imply they should become a regulated utility? This seems like a textbook case of the free market pushing prices down to cost. Having alternative revenue streams pushed that minimal price down; but even without that, there is no reason to think the market would have done anything other than push prices to the lowest level possible in that environment as well.

Company makes too much money: "they're extracting monopolist rents! They need to be a regulated utility!" Company makes too little money: "there's no money in this industry! They need to be a regulated utility!"

Bottom line: there never really is any free market. Because it doesn't work.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#335

Post by baq »

rogerrogerr wrote: post #161
devilbunny wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Meanwhile, first class today is not very much more than coach cost in the regulated era. Try flying Delta. It isn’t the cheapest option, but you really do get better service. If you want to feel special, do Aeromexico first class. The checked bags are waiting for you before you can even walk there on a domestic flight. Spirit was cheap. And if you’re poor, you need cheap. If you aren’t, buy better service and don’t c…

Am I the only one who really doesn't care what kind of service I get on a plane? I don't drink alcohol, so I don't care about that. I bring my own water bottle, so I'm good on that. The little bags of pretzels are nice, but if they stood at the front and launched them out of a t-shirt cannon, I'd be good with that. As long as the required crew of flight attendants doesn't assault me, I've never really got off a plane…

[dead]

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#336

Post by the_gipsy »

gordon_freeman wrote: post #75
rapatel0 wrote: post #48

Fundamental problem: Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments. They basically should have turned into regulated utilities long ago, but loyalty program revenue saved them. Unless this initiative will turn into a credit card company (which nobody likes or wants to do) it won't go anywhere Private equity will likely sell the company for parts.…

> "Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments." If that's the case then how RyanAir survived and is thriving?

RyanAir notoriously uses cheaper secondary airports.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#337

Post by atomicfiredoll »

Drupon wrote: post #293
notepad0x90 wrote: post #24

I could easily afford any of their competitors but I always picked Spirit airlines. The pricing makes sense, pay more if you need more things. I liked Spirit because it was more akin to riding the bus, I got treated well every time by their staff and the experience was fairly consistent. Other airlines also have cramped sits, what little they did better than Spirit isn't worth the price, and the experience was incons…

>I shop at walmart compared to whole foods and other "better" chains for similar reasons. "great value" as walmart's motto goes, it isn't about the price, it's about the value you get for what you pay for. Spirit was the "great value" airline. Yeah it's not a secret that you can get by in life on the cheap if you have cheap, trashy tastes.

Be kind... When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#338

Post by miki123211 »

rapatel0 wrote: post #48

Fundamental problem: Flights don't make money. Airlines actually make all of their money through loyalty programs and credit card payments. They basically should have turned into regulated utilities long ago, but loyalty program revenue saved them. Unless this initiative will turn into a credit card company (which nobody likes or wants to do) it won't go anywhere Private equity will likely sell the company for parts.…

This is like saying that movie theaters make money on popcorn, so they should just start selling popcorn and exit the movie business entirely. The reason those loyalty programs work is because of the flights.

For a much deeper dive on this, see https://www.complexsystemspodcast.com/episodes/gary-leff-fre...

(there's a well-formatted text transcript)

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#339

Post by eru »

chadgpt1 wrote: post #307
eru wrote: post #253

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Similarly, would you close schools, because they didnt make enough money? Yes, of course. We should separate school and state. > Airlines are highly subsidized anyway, treating them as regulated utilities falls short of taking public ownership as public institutions, where services just cost money/subsidies. How are they highly subsidized? And where? Perhaps we should fix that, instead of adding to the problem? Two…

You'd force an entire generation of children to simply not be educated?

No, why? I didn't say that we want to outlaw education.

Though I admit heavily taxing education on account of negative externalities is tempting.

Re: Let's Buy Spirit Air

#340

Post by miki123211 »

thrownthatway wrote: post #295
SOLAR_FIELDS wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two main differences are more armchair lawyering required to avoid fees (legacy carrier is often not going to put your bag in the dimension bin, but the Spirits and Frontiers of the world certainly will) and having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one on the legacy airlines. I think Delta is the only legacy carrier in the States that doesn't do obnoxious sales pitches - only the food cart upsell. Rya…

> having to sit through three sales pitches instead of one I’m not from the US and have never flown any of the airlines being discussed here. I’ve never heard of this, is there some YouTube videos you can point me to.

Ryanair (EU) also does this, but the US is indeed pretty obnoxious here.

United even has commercials before the safety video; combined with the "if you're watching explicit content on this flight, please mind the children" announcement, those flights onestly honestly felt pretty surreal to me.

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