Is it time to reconsider Spirit Airlines and its Free Spirit program?

20.12.2024 - 15:07 / thepointsguy.com / Spirit Airlines / Dania Beach / Rana Ghosh

If you're chatting with a group of travelers and Spirit Airlines comes up, someone will likely recount a story from a past Spirit flight. And at least in my experience, the story usually involves a delay, cancellation or other negative memory.

Of course, we're more likely to remember and recount negative experiences. And I, too, have a negative Spirit Airlines experience to share. The last time I flew Spirit Airlines — in 2021 for a story about how I visited Disney World on a budget — I faced massive lines at the Spirit check-in counter in Orlando and a poorly communicated delay.

But Spirit now has a relatively new fleet and a strong on-time performance and believes it's offering one of the best values in the sky. My husband and I casually chatted with an optimistic Spirit Airlines staffer at the Business Traveler Awards in Miami just days after Spirit filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. This staffer's optimism and excitement about the future of Spirit led to us visiting the Spirit headquarters in Dania Beach, Florida, a few weeks later for an interview with Rana Ghosh, senior vice president and chief transformation officer for Spirit Airlines.

This discussion, and what I learned about the airline's current state and its Free Spirit program while preparing for the interview, led me to wonder — especially with the current Spirit status match challenge — whether it's time to reconsider Spirit Airlines and its Free Spirit program. Here's what I'm thinking.

Spirit introduced its Big Front Seat in 2007 as a rebrand from Spirit Plus. So, Spirit flyers have long had the opportunity to buy a wider seat with more pitch. But Spirit recently introduced new fares, including Go Comfy fares that guarantee a blocked middle seat.

A blocked middle seat sounds appealing and will make your flight more comfortable. But it's important to remember that Go Comfy seats don't have any additional pitch. Based on Aerolopa data, Go Comfy seats only have 28 inches of pitch. That's 9 inches less than the 37 inches typically afforded to Big Front Seats and 7 inches less than the 35 inches offered in most Spirit exit-row seats.

Ghosh noted that the Go Comfy seating is similar to what many European carriers offer in business class on short-haul flights. He highlighted how it was a relatively easy product for Spirit to create and said Spirit is happy with its performance so far.

Now that Spirit has four distinct fare classes — including the premium options of Go Comfy and Go Big — Ghosh highlighted the airline's products that can appeal to each type of traveler and for each specific trip. He also noted that travelers will soon start to see the premium Go Comfy and Go Big fares showing as premium fare types through online