Spirit Airlines is definitely a different airline in this country and often its moves to add fees to its business model causes a lot of fear.  In most respects, I’ve actually come to believe that Spirit is a good thing in the airline marketplace rather than bad.  I certainly don’t blame them for their business model.  If anything, they over-communicate that model and they over-sell their options.  That’s fine and they’re doing nothing illegal or even illegitimate.

They’ve just added a $5 fee (starting in November) for printing your boarding pass at the airport.  Once again, everyone is overreacting to this.  However, this fits within their model and even their typical passenger.  Spirit is for leisure passengers who typically *do* have the means and time to print a boarding pass prior to going to an airport. 

What scares everyone is the idea that every time Spirit adds a fee, other airlines will follow them.  That’s entirely possible when it comes to some fees and I even think the boarding pass printing fee might be one of them for some airlines.  However, it will affect few people and it isn’t a burdensome fee that could cause trouble at an airport.   Plenty of their fees won’t make with other airlines and that’s good, too.  I honestly don’t see a fee developing among network carriers to carry on luggage, for instance. 

But it’s good to have an airline press the issues now and then.  It’s good to have one around that even puts the pressure on LCC carriers from time to time.  I seriously doubt that I will ever fly Spirit Airlines myself.  Their idea of seat pitch is daunting at best for someone who is 6′ 2″ with long legs (29″ seat pitch) and the simply don’t fly to destinations I’m interested in.  I’ll likely stick to Southwest for my LCC needs and Continental for my network carrier needs.

At some point, there ought *not* to be a law against this stuff.  The marketplace *will* settle these issues more often than not.  It isn’t worth the stress thinking about them.

Filed under: Airline Fees by ajax