Jet Blue Buying Spirit Airlines

sure $27 is a steal. i wonder what the actual total will be after all the nickle and diming charges are added.

This fall you might in the clear but I think it’s fair question to ask Shailynn is this flight gonna even be taking place or am I gonna be sleeping in the fucking airport. Spirit has been shaky on that in recent years.

The only time I flew Spirit, several passengers were pissed off. Flight delay(mechanical) and they overbooked and had to transport several passengers from another flight that got canceled. It was a shit show for the ticket agents. I remember thinking to myself to never try that airline again no matter how inexpensive it seemed. My luggage cost $50 to board.

Spirit was a shitty operation, the one time I flew on Spirit, the plane was filthy, and reeked from some stale food garbage.

Yeah I would be only booking them one way and only have a small carry on, plus traveling alone and in no rush for once I don’t care where I get seated. These factors are the only reason I would consider it.

If Jet Blue does end up buying them that would be nice for me, because Spirit runs on a lot of routes I go on and Jet Blue (although far from the best) would be a much welcomed upgrade from Spirit.

Spirit sucked and jetBlue is a shadow of what was once a really great flying experience.

Spirit is talking to Jet Blue because their last merger partner walked away, and so many customers have said "Never again" that Spirit can no longer stay in business as themselves. I took a bunch of Spirit flights a few years ago, and at least one thing went wrong on every flight except one. Lost bags, cancelled or delayed flights. And they charge extra for everything except using the john.

Never flown Spirit but I do remember watching them board a flight once. The number of fees that they listed at the gate was ridiculous. Definitely not an encouragement to fly them. (Not that I would anyway since I'm a FF with perqs on another airline. But still.)

That said, I have this masochistic desire to fly Ryan Air sometime. Just once.

Frontier is definitely a budget airlines but the cheap flights roundtrip under $100 to SD can't be beat. They are the official airlines for this TJ monger.

I used to fly Spirit a lot when I used to go to Vegas just to gamble. Back then, I would just fly drunk and pass out. Now that I fly to Vegas primarily for work, it's a good 50% chance I get a terrible hangover and pretty useless for the next 12-24 hrs. At the same time, Spirit's problems became more apparent: massive delays, overbooking, impossible to sleep on seats. I can't fly on a Spirit flight for more than 2 hrs. Unfortunately, whatever it is I'm doing, I never seem to run out of Spirit miles. I heard that Jet Blue is good. Hopefully, my miles transfer.

I flew on Spirit once.

ONCE.

I had heard about the Spirit/Frontier merger a while back and I thought it was a done-deal but apparently the dotted-line had not been signed.

I was unaware of a Jetblue/Spirit merger but it just so happens I saw a YouTube video about this a few days ago as I was scrolling thru my YT recommended vids (since in the past I liked watching videos about planes and airlines as well as travel-videos) – anyway; if I remember correctly; the gist behind the Jetblue/Spirit merger was more of Jetblue pursuing Spirit vs the other way around – if I remember correctly Spirit had previously turned-down Jetblue and had chosen Frontier to merge with – if I remember; per the video; Jetblue’s desire to merge with Spirit was based on getting more access to the lucrative SFO (San Fran) and LAX slots/gates – according to the video this would aid Jetblue in the lucrative NY/SFO and NY/LAX routes of which Jetblue is currently lacking-in due to not having access to enough slots in these 2 airports - buying Spirit would give Jetblue more access/slots to SFO and LAX and thus be able to have more flights in these lucrative routes – below is the vid that I saw about the possible/likely reasons behind the Jetblue/Spirit merger:

youtube.com

I don’t fly much and haven’t flown post-pandemic – but when I did fly pre-pandemic; I usually flew w/ Spirit b/c of their rock-bottom prices.

I’ve actually never had any issues that I can recall w/ Spirit – never had a cancelled nor very-delayed flight – for me personally the two biggest drawbacks to Spirit are:

1. seat space/comfort – I think this has actually gotten a little bit better over the years – I’m only 5’10; but when I first flew w/ Spirit years back I could barely fit in the seat and my knees actually hit the seat in front – but; I have not had this same issue in the last couple of years – IDK if they’ve increased the seating space a bit; or their newer planes are slightly larger? But still; the seats are not that comfortable but I personally don’t find seating on them unbearable (I’m not a huge guy so finding a seat; plane or o/w; for it to be too-uncomfortable for me to bear; is not common – I say this b/c I’ve read reviews of strip-clubs where the reviewer said he could not stand to sit in the seats and I’ve been to those same clubs and didn’t find issues with the seating – the current main drawback of Spirit seating IMO is that they do not recline at all - which is some ways it’s good so you don’t have the a-hole in front of you reclining his seat to max capacity for his comfort – so given the choice of non-reclining seats or having an a-hole recline the seat in front of me as far as it goes; I prefer the former since for me reclining my seat is desirable but not a huge-deal

2. the other main drawback for me w.r.t. Spirit is the customers – I guess with rock-bottom-prices one also gets rock-bottom-custies – this is usually not an issue – but I do recall one time when I did have an issue in that I was sitting about halfway back in the plane – when we landed the a-holes in the back decided it was proper to just bumrush the main-isle and they would not allow anyone in front of them to get out into the isle so they could deplane – I actually had to block-a-dude that would not let me out of my seat-row into the main-isle and I had to reach across the isle and put my arm on the headrest of the seat across the isle from me and actually physically have to block the guy w/ my arm so I could get out of my seat-row into the main-isle – I had seen this happen in other Spirit flights but that was the first, and actually only time; when it affected me

Besides this the only other drawback IMO w.r.t Spirit is less flights during the day to where one may not be able to fly at the most convenient time – i.e. Spirit may only have a couple of flights during the day and one of them may be very early in the morning and another late at night w/ one or two in b/w – for example: I was currently looking at flights from Miami (Ft Lauderdale) to Atlanta and Spirit is only listing 3 flights per day (I thought in the past there were more like 6/day); yet American Airlines lists more than 20 flights/day from Miami to Atlanta – I usually have a fair amount of flexibility when flying thus the lack of flights/day is a bit of an issue but not a deal-breaker for my personal-situation.

Spirit is only worth-it (price-wise) if one is able to stick to the rock-bottom prices w/o adding-on anything – Spirit charges extra for everything even a glass/bottle of water – they also charge for carry-ons where most airlines at least allow one free carry-on – but Spirit allows a free “personal item” on board – a personal item is anything from a purse to a briefcase to a backpack – but anything bigger than this including a gym-bag; and they will charge you. All my trips have been personal short trips thus I only take my laptop backpack – I have a 17” laptop and have a backpack that has a sleeve for it which is what I use when leaving the house w/ the laptop – given my laptop is 17”; the backpack is decent sized – and this is the backpack I use when I fly on Spirit – I empty the backpack and put in it the minimal stuff I need for my usual short trips – and this way I have never paid for anything additional on Spirit and have always managed to get the rock-bottom fairs (the backpack is supposed to be put under the seat in front of you but I always put it on the overhead-bin and have never had an issue w/ putting it there).

To me the only way it’s worth it to fly Spirit is to not pay any of the add-ons since Spirit charges for everything as an add-on – if one has to add-on luggage and even carry-ons for which they charge for; then the prices start getting more in-line with other airlines and for me not worth it. And Spirit will NAIL YOU if show up at the gate with luggage or a carry-on and you didn’t prepay for it when buying your ticket online – if you show up at the gate with a carry-on you didn’t prepay-for b/c you thought a carry-on was free; I think they charge you $100 at the gate for the carry-on (and same or more if you didn’t prepay for luggage).

So the key to flying Spirit is knowing exactly what they charge for and don’t charge for and making adjustments to avoid those charges if you can - and even then for many people it's not worth-it but for some people getting the same flight for 1/2 to 1/3 the price (if avoiding add-ons) is hard to pass-up.

Merging airlines is very tricky. There is so much that needs to be coordinated from pay scales, job titles, reservation systems, maintenance practices, etc. The transition can take years and be filled with misery for customers.

Like many others, I flew Spirit once and only once. My ass was actually sore when I got up to leave the plane. Thankfully I had a return flight booked on another airline so I didn't have to repeat the experience going back.

I flew Spirit once and that was because my father bought the ticket for me. Once was more than enough. Jetblue I've flown many, many times. It has the highest market share at the airport in Boston, so you can get nonstop flights to just about everywhere they fly. I agree with Skibum that the experience isn't as good as it once was, but comparatively it's still decent for an airline.

I was catching up on Gutfeld's Friday night show and he says:

"Jetblue has agreed to purchase Spirit Airlines for $3.8 Billion dollars - aviation and business experts say Jetblue overpaid by $3.8 billion dollars"

"The deal was supposed to go through immediately but it's still stuck in Ft Lauderdale" (Spirit Airlines' homebase)

LOL

I would assume this merger means the end of supa-cheap flights on Spirit