Right before I went on vacation, Spirit announced that it would be switching up how it sells tickets, going into bundled fares that would make marked differences in the product you’d get onboard. Late last week, the pricing was revealed, so now let’s take a look at how it’s been constructed.
To start, we have to look at the bundles themselves. There are four of them:
The Go bundle is anything but a bundle. It is the basic fare that includes only a personal item and no other baggage. It does not include a seat assignment or anything else onboard in the fare, but you can add on some — but not all — bits and pieces if you’d like. Consider this Basic Economy.
The Go Savvy bundle is more like regular Economy on most airlines. This includes a standard seat assignment plus your choice of a carry-on or checked bag.
The Go Comfy bundle is going to be familiar to Europeans. This is like European business class where it’s a coach seat but the middle is blocked from being occupied to give more room to stretch out. This also includes snacks and drinks along with priority boarding. It’s not as good as eurobiz since it doesn’t include a full meal, but it’s basically the same.
The Go Big bundle is the top of the line. It includes the Big Front Seat which was named that because it’s a big first class seat that had none of the first class trimmings. Now, however, it does. It includes checked and carry-on bags, snacks and drinks, priority boarding and security, and wifi. So this is now a true domestic First Class.
In theory, these bundles sound interesting enough, but it wasn’t worth writing about until everything went on sale, so we could understand how much extra it would cost to buy each bundle. Now, it’s out there, so we can pick it apart.
My first impression is that there’s more nuance here than I would have thought. For example, the Go fare is not like Spirit’s old base fare in that you CAN’T actually add everything on. That fare expressly forbids the addition of a carry-on bag, just like United’s Basic Economy. That’s weird since on short flights, adding a carry-on would actually be more expensive than just buying the next bundle up. I’m not sure why Spirit would want to discourage that if people are dumb enough, but I guess it’s really about making the Go fare a reference price that it wants nobody to ever buy.
Interestingly, this means that you can almost never opt to pay for a carry-on bag separately in the Spirit eco-system any longer. The only time you can is if you choose Go Savvy and select to have a checked bag included. Then you can add on a carry-on for $50. (And by the way, if you select to have the carry-on included, then it’s also $50 to add a checked bag, so no difference in price either way.)
This bag pricing looks to be fixed for now. It doesn’t vary by time, distance, etc yet. I’m sure it will eventually.
Here’s another interesting quirk. The Spirit website has long been built to maximize pain by making you click through every single screen (damn you, car rentals) before you can pay.
That is still the case when it comes to a Go fare, and in fact, you now have to click a box and say you “accept Go restrictions” before you can even move on in that process, so it makes it as painful as possible.
But on every other fare, after you select seats, it now skips directly to payment. If you need to add a bag, there is a drop down you can expand on the page to do it. But for all the other add-ons like wifi, car rentals, etc, you would have to go to the navigation and click back to the Options page. I guess those weren’t drawing much money, so Spirit would rather just get you to check-out as quickly as possible so you don’t abandon the process.
The other thing to note here is that not everything can be added on. If you want that Big Front Seat, you have to buy the Go Big bundle. Or if you want a blocked middle, you have to buy the Go Comfy bundle. There is no option to just add on premium seating like there used to be. That’s likely going to be frustrating for some, but I can also understand why it’s done that way. People in those sections get differentiated onboard service, so if some got it and others didn’t, it would be very hard to implement. Now it’s all or nothing.
In the end, what really matters is just how much it’s going to cost, right? I did a whole lot of poking around, and have a rough idea of how this looks. To illustrate, I looked up every nonstop flight from LAX on October 15, and it appears that the upsell amounts are a tiered system based on mileage.
Spirit One-Way Upsell Prices On LAX Nonstops (Oct 15)
This, I should note, is not perfect. There were some markets that fluctuated by $10 in one direction or another, but for the most part this appears to at least be the starting point. Maybe it changes based on how much has been already been booked in those upper bundles where seats are more limited.
This says that adding in a bag and seat assignment will cost you anywhere from $40 to $60 if you do it in a bundle. Is that worth it? It’s hard to say. Spirit’s a la carte seat assignment pricing is wild. On October 15, the cheapest seat you can reserve on a Go fare is $14 from LAX to Newark, but it’s $18 on the short hop to Las Vegas. So your mileage will absolutely vary depending upon where you’re going.
Of course, if you need a carry-on bag then it’s not even on option with Go, so you should just pay up for Go Savvy. And if you do want to check a bag, it’s $50. Unless you are fine with just a personal item, it’s probably not even worth thinking about Go.
From Go Savvy to Go Comfy, the upsell is $60 to $75. Note that for anything over 1,000 miles, it’s $130 above the Go price. It’s just distributed a little differently between the upsell points in the 1,000 to 1,500 mile range.
This option only makes sense if you really care about the blocked middle seat OR if you need both a carry-on and checked bag. In the latter case, it means you’re only paying $10 to $20 extra to block that middle seat. That’s worth it. But above that, I’m not so sure. It probably will depend upon how long the flight is and how big you are.
The last upsell is from Go Comfort to Go Big. This is the true First Class seat, so it is a very different experience. Wifi is included as well. I tend to think of this as less of an upsell than just catering to someone who is specifically looking for this experience. The upsell is fairly expensive for people on a budget, and it may very well not make sense anyway.
For example, on October 15, Spirit wants $198 to Go Big. Alaska is at $131 for First Class while American is at $156 and Delta is at $161. Why would I bother with Spirit? On the other hand, if I’m going to Detroit, Spirit wants $315 and Delta is more than double at $664. Spirit adds huge value.
Note that these upsell amounts are not fixed. It does look like there’s a different upsell for connecting flights. And there does appear to be a bump on Go Big pricing during the holidays. But you get the basic idea.
From Spirit’s perspective, it hopes it gets nearly everyone buying Go Savvy and hopefully very healthy upsell beyond. If it doesn’t, it’s going to lose big on this. But for an airline that is posting remarkably bad financial losses, this is the kind of change that needs to be tried. It has long had a bad reputation, so an extreme makeover is a start. Unfortunately, this is not available through online (or other) travel agents like Expedia, so the airline is already starting with one hand tied behind its back.
Just as Frontier needs with its similar strategy, Spirit has to get a lot of upsell and hope that this friendlier system gets more people willing to fly the airline.
