spirit airlines to begin charging for carryon bags

If I'm paying to check a bag, the airline should refund the entire ticket if it doesn't arrive at my destination. I'll understand if there's a short window between connecting flights. But there's no excuse when I've got a four-hour layover.

 

Yes, it's a business and your utter contempt for your customers, the one that pay your f**king salary makes me sick.

I am one of those people that scours the net looking for the lowest fare. You know why? Because that's what commercialism is all about friend.

Would it be nice if every mom and pop store in the country survived the takeover of Walmart? Yes. But, bottom line is in business there are those who want to make money (The business owners) and those who want to save money (the customers).

And while I'd love for you to stick around and thrive, the bottom line is I don't give a flying f**k about your bottom line. In fact, I don't give a sh*t if you make a profit at all.

You're there for one reason and one reason only, to get me to where I need to go and if you don't like it and you start charging me ridiculous fees because you need to "stay competitive", I'll find someone else whose deal is better and you'll be left out in the cold.

Don't like it? Tough. Quit your bitching and fly the f**king plane.

 

I'm 32 and I've flown more than a hundred times in my life. In all of those flights, only ONE TIME has my bag not made it to my destination. It sucked, since it was Christmas Eve and I didn't want to be dealing with the issue, but there was nothing I could do. It took almost four days for the bag to arrive. I was leaving to fly back the next day. I was provided a small stipend for the days it was missing. It was handled well. I will check my bags in the future, knowing there's a slight possibility that they will not make it to my destination. But that 99.2 percent guarantee is enough for me.

That said, bydesign, and I'm not trying to attack, I hope you don't take that attitude into your daily interactions with airline customers (if you even deal with customers at all; I don't know that). I've dealt with insensitive airline employees before, and it surely dampens the experience. In fact, unless the fare is incredibly low, I will avoid one airline like the plague because of how awful their customer service treated me.

 

I went to Miami a few years ago and my bags were lost for two days! I had to buy a set of new clothes, down to the socks and underwear -- which wasn't cheap because I was in Miami, and you can't just buy one pair of underwear. Of course, I didn't get reimbursed by the airline.

Now when I travel, I take an overstuffed rolling bag and use it as my carry on, I use a backpack bursting at the seams as my carryon. It doesn't get lost, I don't have to wait for it and it saves me money. Besides, if its too big and I get it on the plane, they probably won't charge me to stow it.

 

The only time I check bags is when I'm going somewhere for a week or more. If not, I'm carrying on everything. I'll pay extra for the carry on bags if necessary. I hate messing with checked bags and that whole process. Just a huge waste of time.

 

I don't fly airlines like Sprint, Air Tran, etc. because all of those bargain basement flights are scary -- they usually bumpy and make me feel unsafe. I've never had one of those kinds of flights that didn't feel like I was sitting in a Yugo that was ready to drop out of the sky.

You get what you pay for.

I feel much safer on flights of bigger airlines.

The fact that this shitkicker airline thinks it can increase its revenue by fleecing people who are brave enough to fly it is laughable.

 

Yep. He'd be perfect working for Ben Baldanza -- they both have contempt for their customers.

O'Leary & Kelleher never treat(ed) their customers that way.

 

It's not fear of losing my bags that makes me carry on, it's the long wait times at the destination for your bags to come up.

The last two times I checked a bag, it took an hour for my bag to come out. (Once at LGA, once at MDW.)

That's way too long. Especially at an airport where your airline doesn't have their own staff to unload the plane, it can take forever. They're just not prepared to handle the load if a bunch of planes land at once or there have been disruptions causing them to be busier than expected.

Late at night can suck too. Waiting an hour at 10:00PM on a Sunday night is no fun.

I'd love to dump my bag at check in and be free of lugging it around, but not if it's going to cost me that much time.

 

Exactly.

 

There's no way you can make people check laptops. The theft/wreckage
rate would be off the charts.

That said, this is utter horseshit, and over the line. Letting people carry on
reduces the stress on the ground check crews, considerably. One-step
thinking in this area (like this) is regressive/'tarded.

 

If you read the Times article, it points out the benefits that the airlines have seen from charging to check bags, but there are unintended consequences as well.

It's taking longer to load and unload planes now with everyone carrying on so many bags.

I imagine this is an effort to balance that out and capture some more revenue at the same time.

But it will be a disaster for the staff who will have to try to enforce it.

For frequent flyers (frequent enough to have status) who fly major carriers, this stuff isn't such a big deal. They waive a lot of the fees, they let you board early while there's still room in the overhead, and you get a seat upfront so you can get off quickly (twss).

Spirit has no business travelers.