Spirit Airlines (Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood) will begin new daily nonstop flights from Latrobe, Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh). The carrier announced new daily service from Arnold Palmer Regional Airport to Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport which begins May 7, 2015.
With these additional routes Spirit Airlines will operate nonstop flights from Latrobe to seven cities. Current routes include: Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood, Fort Myers, Las Vegas (starting April 16, 2015), Myrtle Beach, Orlando, and Tampa.
From Chicago O’Hare, Spirit will operate flights to a total of 23 cities nonstop with this additional route. Current routes from Chicagoinclude: Atlanta, Atlantic City, Baltimore/Washington, DC, Boston,Denver, Dallas/Fort Worth, Fort Lauderdale, Fort Myers, Houston, Kansas City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis-St. Paul, Myrtle Beach, New Orleans, New York, Oakland, Orlando, Philadelphia (starting April 16, 2015), Phoenix, Portland (OR), San Diego (starting April 16, 2015), and Tampa.
Copyright Photo: Chris Sands/AirlinersGallery.com. Airbus A319-132 N534NK (msn 3395) touches down in Las Vegas.
Spirit Airlines (Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood) has announced new daily service from Arnold Palmer Regional Airport in Latrobe (near Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania to Las Vegas starting April 16, 2015.
Spirit currently offers year-round flights to Orlando and Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood, with seasonal service to Myrtle Beach, Fort Myers (starting December 18, 2014) and Tampa (starting December 19, 2014).
In other news, the airline that people love to hate, has issued its “State of Hate” report on what passengers do not like with airlines:
People hate air travel. When given the opportunity, consumers have very little trouble expressing their hate against airlines. In fact thousands of people unleashed their hate last summer when Spirit Airlines opened itself to feedback asking people why they hate to fly. The airline has now released the results of this feedback in their “State of Hate Report.”
Last July Spirit announced their “Hug The Haters” campaign along with the “Hate Thousand Miles Giveaway” where they encouraged consumers to share their frustrations with flying, and in return gave the “haters” 8,000 FREE SPIRIT® miles to use on future Spirit flights. The response was overwhelming. In just a few days, almost 30,000 people shared their hate.
The report made it clear air travel is a hassle and annoys people, no matter which airline you fly. Spirit assumed that since they asked for the candid feedback, most of the hate would be directed at them. To their surprise, 60 percent of the responses they received were frustrations with airlines other than Spirit.
“I think if any organization asks for feedback you would expect the vast majority of responses would be directed at the company that seeks it,” said Spirit’s President and CEO Ben Baldanza. “But in this case we were surprised that most consumers chose to share their frustrations about other airlines.”
Spirit has taken the feedback, compiled the data, and today released what they call “The State Of Hate” report which can be found at www.hatethousandmiles.com.
“Airlines mess up and air travelers get frustrated,” added Baldanza. “Spirit is listening and willing to be transparent enough to admit where we can do things better. The feedback we received makes it clear no airline is immune from upsetting their customers, and at Spirit we can do a better job of explaining how flying with us is different.”
Here are some of the results of the State of Hate Report:
20% of consumers who responded hate airline seats. They hate everything about them: size, shape, getting to them, leg room, and reclining.
16% shared their frustrations with lost bags and baggage policies.
15% complained about delays and airline customer service.
The report also lists the different types of complaints and which airlines have the highest percentage of complaints by category. Not surprisingly, Spirit led the pack in frustrations about its “fee” structure.
“We don’t look at them as fees, they are options that our customers can choose, or not depending on how much money they wish to save,” said Baldanza. “But this clearly shows we need to continue educating our customers about our business model. Our experience shows once customers understand how much money they save with our model, they like it a lot.”
As has come to be expected, Spirit took the feedback and had some fun with it. Another surprising aspect of the feedback was the level of vitriol and expletives used in many of the hate messages. Spirit created a “Vulgarity Index” showing the different curse words that are used to describe the respondents hate for air travel. The report also contains a fun and irreverent newscast presenting the results of the report with puppets as the news anchors.
“The bottom line is, airline travel is frustrating,” continued Baldanza. “So the least we can do is keep offering the lowest fares in the industry to help lessen some of the hate. This allows our customers to have more money to spend once they get to the place they want to be, instead of spending their entire travel budget on the cost of a plane ticket.”
Video: CNBC’s Jim Cramer interviews CEO Ben Baldanza about their financial performance:
Spirit Airlines (Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood) has announced it is starting new seasonal service between Arnold Palmer Regional Airport serving Latrobe (near Pittsburgh), Pennsylvania (LBE) and two additional Florida cities – Tampa (TPA) and Fort Myers (RSW) starting on December 18, 2014.
These nonstop seasonal flights are in addition to Spirit’s regular, year-round service to Fort Lauderdale/Hollywood and Orlando.
Copyright Photo: Tony Storck/AirlinersGallery.com. Airbus A320-232 N618NK (msn 5458) taxies to runway 09L at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport (FLL).
