The Only Thing Worse Than Spirit Airlines

Spirit Airlines died as it lived: lots of angry customers and no one picking up the phone. Early yesterday morning, when America’s most hated airline announced that it would immediately cease all operations, Spirit left tens of thousands of passengers at airports across America scrambling to figure out what to do next. Some arrived to catch their flight, only to find deserted check-in kiosks plastered with a goodbye message: All Spirit flights have been cancelled, and customer service is no longer available.The end of Spirit was sudden and dramatic, but not unexpected. The budget airline had long been going through it: one failed merger after the next, two bankruptcies within the span of a year, and finally, rising fuel costs from the Iran war that turned a bad situation into a dire one. When the hope of a last-minute Trump-administration bailout fell through, Spirit Airlines apparently had no choice but to ground its banana-yellow planes for good. (A company spokesperson declined to comment.)The schadenfreude that Spirit’s many haters are feeling now is free—unlike everything else Spirit ever offered. The airline lured customers with dirt-cheap fares, and then nickel-and-dimed them with hidden extra charges. Wanted to book online? That came with a “passenger usage” fee of up to $28 each way. A carry-on bag? That was $33, or more if you waited until the last minute. Or how about a printed boarding pass? Another $10 a pop if you asked an airport agent. Even the water came with a price tag: $4.50. And that was before the indignity of cramped seats, frequent delays, and unreliable customer service. People have dubbed Spirit the “school bus of the sky” and the “airline equivalent of gas station sushi.” In one 2014 poll, respondents said that they would prefer sitting near snakes on a plane—actual reptiles, not the movie—over flying Spirit.For all the justified kvetching, America is about to learn a hard lesson: The only thing worse than a world with Spirit is one withou