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Spirit Airlines Talks About Their Gas, But This Time It's Not Some Attempt At Humor

February 19, 2010 at 9:02 AM | by | Comments (0)

We’re not totally sure what’s going on with Spirit Airlines lately, but we like what we’re seeing. The airline recently offered a chance to score a free flight by helping out the victims of the earthquake in Haiti, and now they are sharing some airline insider secrets with the traveling public. Instead of playing a guessing game when booking airline reservations, customers can now understand some of the costs that go into pricing an airline ticket.

The airline is trying to ensure transparency by talking about their fuel costs. They’re actually letting us know how much it costs to fill up the tank in the airplane, and how the information translates into the total cost of an airline ticket. Spirit Airlines is also proud of their efficient fleet of Airbus 319 aircraft, especially compared to the fuel efficiency per passenger of the MD80 series—that’s what Allegiant Air uses for its discount flights.

Their calculators assume an 80% load factor of butts in the seats, and things are broken down by gallons of fuel used by the plane and by the passenger. They’ve even busted out their slide rules to let us know how fuel-efficient we are in our seats by sharing the per passenger miles per gallon. If you’re flying about 1,000 miles you’ll be getting about 58 MPG—that’s like a human Prius.

It’s interesting that they’re sharing this information, because it doesn’t allow for much secretive stuff in the whole airfare process. Now there’s the ability to see that a flight costs a certain amount and that the fuel costs a different amount. Spirit Airlines must think that when passengers actually see what portion of the total fare is made up of jet fuel, that they’ll actually see that the low cost carrier is truly one of the lowest fare options in the sky. Let’s just hope they continue to update things on a regular basis, because right now the information is already like a week old.

Related Stories:
· How Much Is My Fuel? [Official Site]
· Donate $5 To Haiti Relief and Spirit Airlines Will Give You a Free Flight [Jaunted]
· Airline News coverage [Jaunted]

[Photo: mac_filko]

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