Spirit Airlines Showing Cracks in the Armor.

As many of you may or may not know our friend Travel Ape has headed south, and in good time, to miss out on the cold of the Northeast. Well good for him. That being said, however, in a phone conversation yesterday I can tell you that our Symian Friend was not very happy with his flying experience on Spirit Airlines. To say it bluntly Spirit Airlines wasn't good.  Now let me remind all of you that in the past and for quite some time Travel Ape has been very happy with his traveling service brought by Spirit. It just seemed like from the very beginning that there were going to be issues. 

In the first place, the only flight offered to his destination, which was the South West Region of Florida heading to places like Bonita Springs, Naples, and Fort Myers departed at 7:30am in the morning. Doing what he always does, Travel Ape headed to the airport to arrive at 1o minutes to 6am to find a line out the door. The Spirit Airlines staff only had 4 people at the counters and the line moved very slow. Having worked his way through the gauntlet he next came to another long line, but in all fairness this was managed by the staff of the Atlantic City International Airport.  Now to be fair to Spirit Airlines, it appeared that this point in the trip was where things went sour. Travel Ape conceded that, although he had never been to prison, the style and manner in which the staff cattle prodded people through the line and the way they spoke to people, including senior citizens, reminded him of what he had seen as new inmates came off buses and were being brought into the state pen for the first time. Next due to the short amount of time from being let into the gate area to being able to sit down and eat, he had literally 15 minutes and they started to board the plane. 

It only got worse for some reason. The plane was delayed because the staff had not cleaned it from the previous flight nor was able to, in a timely manner, de-ice the wings and then the flight itself took more than 45 minutes than was expected. 

Again, many of the issues may have to be just chalked up to acts of God, but in the totality of things, Spirit Airlines needs to address these issues. One such thing that has nothing to do with the flight itself is the very booking process on the site. There used to be such an easy interface to book seats after the reservations were made, but now for the last two flights that Travel Ape has used Spirit Airlines the interface was impossible.

I'm sure he speaks for most when he prays and hopes that Spirit's Brass see the issues and we'll address the issues quickly and efficiently. The travel world is bad enough without having issues of bad customer service.