Saturday 13 February 2016

Budget carriers.

One of the problems with travelling on the fly with no set itinerary is that when you choose not to take the long haul buses and decide to fly, plane ticket prices can really jump in price. Generally I've found that once it's under 2 weeks, even the budget carriers can cost more than the full fare ones. For my time in New Orleans, I had chosen to fly by Spirit Air as with only about 3-4 days before I had decided to fly, they were by far the cheapest option. I must say I have been really unlucky with this carrier though. Somewhat disappointed with the service but I guess you get what you pay for. On my flight into New Orleans from California, the first flight was delayed and the counter staff were not aware of the fact that I would not be able to catch my onward flight until I brought it up. This is despite there being another 8 passengers who had been sold the same connection! I was already mentally prepared to miss my flight but prior to landing, the pilot made an announcement to say that they would be holding our connecting flight as there were quite a few of us and we were only 15mins late. All the other passengers were also gracious, letting us disembark from the plane first. So the bunch of us quickly got off once the door was opened and rushed over to the next gate , only to be told they had not held our flight. In terms of reimbursement, Spirit is really good. They will refund you any ticket immediately. But I guess they know that anything else is going to be a few hundred dollars more.  And they dont provide you with any meal vouchers or accommodation. Thus I took up their offer to reroute me through Dallas and then New Orleans. Well the funny thing is all of their other flights were delayed, leaving 2-3hrs after their listed times. Which really makes me wonder why they could not hold a flight for 15mins. The only flight that left on time was the one which left without 9 passengers. Thus a 3hr journey ended up with me seeing 4 different airports and taking a total of 22hrs. 

I am aware that sometimes screw ups happen and thus on my outward leg, I decided to give Spirit Air another shot. Guess what, they cancelled my flight. I had to pay for my own transport back to town, pay for another night and get myself back to the airport 24hrs later. 

Oh. That flight got delayed too. 2.5hrs late.

No comments:

Post a Comment