there wasn’t any weather at either the origin or destination airport, which is why i put “weather” in quotes. that was their stated excuse, but i didn’t see anything which corroborated it. certainly nothing that merited canceling the flight.

The convenience fee is actually $13.50 for booking online, and yes, free at the airport, if and when someone is actually there to sell you a ticket.

The Trip Flex fee is more than just a name change, its also for changing the flight. Otherwise, the change fee is $50. I’ve used this many times and its saved me a lot.

Regarding Priority Boarding, this only “helps” people in rows 3 – 20ish. The idea is to get on and snag overhead bin space. If you are EVER in rows 3 – 10, kiss your carry-on goodbye. It just won’t fit.

What we do is get the exit row for $15 each, and that alleviates the need for priority boarding.

We fly Allegiant frequently between our two basis and its interesting to note that on our Knoxville/Ft. Lauderdale flights, its a good mix of leisure and business. I’ve sat next to the same guy 3 times now. Its such a joy for us to NOT have to stop in Charlotte or Atlanta on this route.

Since all seats are assigned (if not pre-purchased, they’re assigned at check-in), there’s little point in buying seats, especially if you’re traveling in a group — they seat groups together on the day of the flight, before check-in opens. And they will change your seat assignment upon request at check-in, all you need to do is arrive at the airport before the crowd. Also because seats are assigned, the only advantage of priority boarding is overhead bin space; but since priority boarding requires a purchased seat, it’s actually cheaper to check a bag than to buy a seat + priority. And at least in one airport (XNA), priority means you’ll spend the longest time in the dreary tunnel, waiting to board. @KP — my experience is that they did board the priorities first when the plane was full (at XNA), but not when it was 1/3 empty (at LAX).

When I bought my tickets online I was not charged a convenience fee; my guess is that’s because I bought it before they had any flights from LAX and thus weren’t selling tickets there. Personally, since I work near LAX, if I fly them again I’d probably just leave 30 minutes early and buy the tickets on my way to work — better pay $3 or $5 to park at Terminal 6 than pay a convenience fee for 4 people.

Trip flex — unless you think there’s a good chance you’ll cancel and you have an alternate person lined up to replace you, I think $15 is a fairly large up-front fee to protect a potential loss of $50.

One more thing: when I flew I rented child car seats from the car rental company because I assumed Allegiant would charge me for checking them or charge me more for gate-checking them (their web site is not clear on this point). A friend of mine later flew LAX-WIC and back on Allegiant, and they checked the child car seats free of charge. I don’t know if it’s official policy or if the agent was just being nice.

Anyway, the big advantage of Allegiant for me is non-stop service to destinations that otherwise require a connection._

when the day of my flight came around, they canceled it at the last minute due to “weather”, without any warning, and i only found out when i showed up for the flight. they said that they would operate a makeup flight 24 hours later (saturday evening), but as it was a short, 3-day weekend trip and i had made hotel and rental car reservations, it would have ruined the trip. allegiant doesn’t interline, so they couldn’t book us on another carrier, and they wouldn’t give me a refund. the station manager said the only thing he could tell me was to call their customer service phone number. i ended up buying tickets on another airline instead and took my trip. and good thing, too, because it turns out that the “saturday” makeup flight they had promised didn’t actually happen until their scheduled sunday evening flight, which would have completely killed the whole point of my weekend trip. thankfully i wasn’t in the middle of my trip when this happened.

anyway, i ended up shelling out a lot more money paying a walkup fare at another airline, but i made my trip. and after numerous phone calls and emails (on the phone they kept telling me to email their customer service, and they would email me telling me to call the phone number), i did eventually get my refund about a month and a half later. it was like pulling teeth to do so, though.

so, bottom line, i suppose allegiant can be a good deal assuming everything goes right, but you should really be aware that should something go wrong, their bare-bones operation can end up costing you a lot of money and frustration, because they really won’t do anything to help you out, and they really don’t want to give you your money back.