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Spirit to Charge $4.90 'Passenger Usage Fee' For Just Buying a Ticket

March 9, 2009 at 10:11 AM | by Omri | 1 Comment

Last week we covered a couple of customers who vowed never to fly Spirit Airlines again, no matter how competitive the fares. Given the direction the airline is going, that's not going to be a problem.

Spirit has decided to introduce a new fee, something called the passenger usage fee of $4.90 per ticket for flights purchased outside of Spirit's own airport ticket counters. Yes, that includes the tickets you buy online at Spirit's own website.

The fee, designed to cover reservation-booking costs, will be part of Spirit's aggressive and edgy strategy, which doesn't always fly well with passengers... For airlines, one huge advantage of fees is that they don't show up in most reservation systems when consumers are shopping for airfares. That's because airlines aren't required to advertise fees that only certain customers will pay, like those checking baggage.

We had a whole rant prepared just about the phrase "aggressive and edgy strategy," complete with a discussion of how institutional pressures inside contemporary newsrooms are causing travel journalists to rely on press releases and PR flack to generate copy. But screw it.

This a hidden fee that charges travelers for printing tickets from their own printers. Which means that this is a fee where customers are penalized for saving Spirit time and material resources. Are you kidding? And does anyone buy tickets from airport counters anymore? (The characters of "Lost" not included.)

It's no wonder Spirit Airline is not winning any Twitter popularity awards. A recent search on Twitter for Spirit Airlines turned up several gripes about this new fee, some of which we won't print here. And we didn't even take a swing at their stunt from last month, where they decided to use the hips of flight attendants as beer billboards. Another couple weeks of this and they'll be flirting with inflatable pillow territory. That is not a happy place to be.

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Return to » Spirit to Charge $4.90 'Passenger Usage Fee' For Just Buying a Ticket

  1. juliana

    Jaunted Contributing Editor

    this is a great idea

    if this were 1999 and spirit was trying to take on the up and coming internet and save jobs for their human employees. but this is 2009 and spirit is trying to penalize us for using the website and/or the phone reservations system? does not compute.

    i just dont get it. maybe this is what happens when you have $2 flights.

    March 9, 2009 at 10:40 AM
    #Permalink

Return to » Spirit to Charge $4.90 'Passenger Usage Fee' For Just Buying a Ticket

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