Monday, February 28, 2011

Paying Spirit Airlines Your Hard Earned Money Will Earn You a Spot in Hell

What does $1000.00 get you on Spirit Airlines


It will cost you $47.70 to bring a small Carry –On bag on Spirit Airlines (with 6% tax added in).  Since you don’t just travel one way, you need to multiply this number by 2, making it $95.40

Keep in mind, this isn’t the big American Touristor you can fit a body in, this is that little bag you take on the plane to hold your ipod, the book you won’t read and the tuna salad sandwich you will eat.

So what does $1,000 get you?  It will get you 10.4 trips.  That’s it.  Not even like 12 or 13.  Not even 10 and a half.  10.4 trips.

 Let’s say you go to Florida from New York twice a year.  Let’s say you have a significant other with you, because unless you’re a serial killer, you probably don’t travel alone (and if you are a serial killer, that’s cool, I am on your side, we have a common enemy.), so now we are at 5 trips.

OK, so now you and your partner are going to Florida twice a year.  Probably to visit family and call it a vacation, but again, I am not judging, just saying….

So now you have 5 trips for $1,000.00  in luggage.

What else could you have done with that money?

At Enterprise you could have rented a Full Size car at $45.00 per day for TWENTY TWO DAYS!!!  You are probably only in Florida for 4 or 5 days!  You could leave that rental car at your Grandma’s place at Century Village until you come back!  I bet you don’t even rent a car.  You probably make someone go pick you up at the airport and then go and drop you off.  Trust me, they don’t want to do this.

At the Marriot in Boca Raton, which charges $130 a night with tax, you could have stayed in a room with double beds for SEVEN DAYS!  Why bother dealing with your in-laws, or cousins, or parents?  You could leave whenever you wanted and not have to sit in their dumpy condo!  Imagine being able to use the bathroom on your time?!?!  I mean really, you are traveling with a companion.  Do you think they like Uncle Mike’s pull out couch? They don’t.  They don’t like it.  They think less of you for making them sleep on it.  Because your cheap, and blew all the money on your stupid luggage and now your sleeping with mice and crumbs and hair and quarters on midsize from Jennifer Convertibles.

You could go to Jungle Island in Miami and take TWENTY SEVEN kids with you!  Literally a whole class full of kids!  Kids love Jungle Island.  Hell, I love Jungle Island!  They have a god damn LIGRE!!  That’s a Male Lion and a Female Tiger combined!  Who doesn’t want to see that?  I know who does… The 27 kids in Mrs. Omar’s Kindergarten class.  Why do you hate the children?  You look those kids in the face and tell them that you needed to bring those stupid Sketchers sneakers that no one likes, or 5 bathing suits for a 4 day trip.

So what did you save on each flight? Maybe you each saved $100?  Well that’s gone with the luggage.  It’s as if it never even happened.

So why even bother.  Just fly Jet Blue.  It’s a few bucks more, but I would have paid an extra $50 bucks per person to not get stranded at the airport last week.  Well, actually I paid a LOT more than that after Spirit left me stranded and I had to buy an INSANELY expensive ticket to get back to CT in 24 hours and not waiting the 4 days (YEAH, FOUR DAYS!) that Spirit suggested I wait….

Spirit Air on Twitter: Top 5 of the Week

Top 5 Spirit Airline tweets for the week ending 02/27/2011


5) @BobbyBiscayne :  Spirit Airlines, it’s like a school bus, with wings.

4) @jennrein  :  Spirit Airlines:  Antithesis of service cultire.  Each kid seated without parents. Late. Oversold. No one cares

3) @Neilstrauss  :  Spirit Airlines is doing that.  LOL.  I believe they want to start charging for the O2 mask that drop with the change in pressure

2) @mightydinosaur  :   Spirit Airlines, I get the sense that you are insufficiently committed to the cause of getting me out of the Fort Lauderdale airport.

And my personal favorite:

1) @Kurtinthe305  :  Spirit airlines sucks!


Sunday, February 27, 2011

Meet the CEO


This extremely unattractive man you are looking at is the man who gets the money.  Meet Ben Baldanza, CEO of Spirit Airlines (Photo courtesy of Jaunted.com). 

According to Yahoo and USA Today this poor man's ugly version of Kevin James led Spirit Airlines to gross (not profit, but gross) about 700m in 2008, which is nice, however they made around $762,000,000 in 2007.  Despite losing his company about half a million dollars, the CEO paid himself close to $1,000,000 in that same time frame. 
I realize that this doesn't sound like much for a CEO to be making (even a bad one...), but the salary is just part of a larger compensation package for a company that hoped to raise $300,000,000 with an IPO released a little over a year later.

Ben Baldanza is the bad guy.  Think John Crease from Karate Kid meets Tony Soprano.
He is famous for weird "viral" video adverts (yeah, he even said "viral", which must have been "epic" and so "world wide web").  In Fact, he is SOOOO tech savy that he recently made this minor flap (Trust me, you won't believe how stupid this human is)

Digital Journal Spirit CEO makes BAD email mistake



If you would like to Contact Spirit Airlines by phone, you can do so by calling 954-447-7920, which is weird, because this is a South Florida number, and anyone who tries to call Spirit Airlines knows full well that the only people answering the phones are in India.

First Post

I decided to start this blog after I was stranded with my 8 month pregnant wife and 3 year old son by Spirit Air. 

I guess my anger wasn't from the fact that they over sold my 6:45 am flight, nor was it from the fact that they refused to help us get on another flight.  It wasn't from the fact that we weren't compensated with at least a voucher, refund, or a free cup of coffee...

My anger stems from the fact that the staff of Spirit Airlines acted like I had done something wrong to THEM and now they had to deal with ME!

I decided to make this site after I videotaped my situation with my blackberry, and after telling people about it, I realized that my situation was not unique.  EVERYONE I spoke with had a similar issue.

Hopefully this is a place where people can share those stories.

Email me with any photos, videos, or stories you may have at fckspiritair@gmail.com or on Twitter at @SpiritAir_Sucks