Post: #1

Ever since I started frequenting Flyertalk several years ago, I've known that if you experience any kind of inconvenience on a flight and complain about it that the airline will generally reimburse you pretty well. Airlines don't want to deal with DOT complaints which can trigger pain-in-the-ass investigations, so it's a lot easier for them to dole out a flight voucher or some frequent flyer miles.

Issues such as your seat not reclining, meal tray latch broken, in-flight music not working, are all dumb little inconveniences that airlines will pay out for, generally in the $50-150 range depending on the airline and your frequent flyer status.

Thing is, all the major airlines have a customer relations department that is in charge of responding to all the complaints, but they also investigate them throughly before doling out any money. They have records of if/when a particular seat on a plane was broken, or if the in-flight TV wasn't working, so they're not going to throw you money if your complaint isn't verifiable.

This is where Spirit Airlines comes in. They don't have a separate customer relations department, although they claim they have one. At Spirit, any supervisor can issue you a $50 credit if they deem your complaint to be credible. However, they don't perform any investigation on the complaint like a traditional airline does. As long as you bitch enough, they'll throw you a $50 credit.

Another thing is, it seems they ONLY have the option to offer you a $50 credit, nothing more or less. I've bitched about my $400 blazer being ruined because a flight attendant spilled coke on it, and another time about my seat not reclining properly, and no matter what the issue is I get a $50 credit.


Some caveats regarding the credits:

You can apply one credit per flight. Since Spirit doesn't discount a roundtrip vs two one-ways, buy your one-ways separately and redeem a separate credit on each of them.

Spirit credits are non-transferable. So you must have flown with them once before in order to take advantage of this.

These particular $50 credits that the supervisors give you over the phone expire after 60 days of issue. You can book your flight further in advance, but have plans to book something when you call in to complain.


So this is an easy way to save a hundred bucks on your next Spirit trip. This does require a bit of time and persistence, however, and you'll be dealing with long hold times while being transferred to the supervisor in either the Philippines or India, and even then the supervisor will then be putting you on hold while he creates the voucher. Each phone call can take as much as an hour, so do this on a long drive to work or something.

Another savings tip with Spirit is avoiding their "passenger usage fee," which is a $16 fee that they add in per segment on your booking. This fee applies to online and phone bookings, but not to bookings made in person at an airport ticket counter. So depending on how close you are to an airport, this is an opportunity to save $32 on a roundtrip.

Given that Spirit has some good deals if you book a month in advance, by doing this you can get some very cheap airfare, especially if you're doing a 2 day trip and can avoid baggage fees. I've done this on probably 8 segments myself over the last couple years, and have helped a few friends do it also so if you have any questions I'll be responding to the thread.