While Airbus jets will still be yellow, almost everything else about the Spirit Airlines passenger experience will soon be revamped.
The Denia Beach, Florida-based carrier announced Tuesday what may be its biggest business strategy shift yet.
Spirit is officially abandoning its traditional bare-bones fare structure and replacing it with four new segmented fare products.
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There’s a lot to digest, and you can find all the details below.
4 new rentals of spirits, products
Spirit is introducing four new fare products designed to appeal to a broader range of travelers.
New rental products include various features and accessories. The cheapest offering is Go Fare, which largely mimics the existing Spirit experience.
With this fare, you will get a ticket and a personal item. You will need to purchase all of your incidentals separately, such as seat assignment, checked bags and snacks. Passengers traveling with Go fares will not be allowed to bring a full size carry-on bag and will not have the option to pay to bring it. Therefore, those who want to bring a full-size rollboard will have to purchase a separate rental product or pay to check their bags.
Spirit’s next-cheapest offering will be the Go Savvy fare. This package includes a full-size carry-on bag or checked bag, as well as a standard seat assignment. Snacks, beverages and onboard internet access will all be available for an additional charge.
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The airline will then offer two new premium fares that include innovative new products.
The first is the Go Comfy fare which guarantees a blocked middle seat, priority boarding, carry-on bag and checked bag. These seats will also include a single pick from a small snack basket and a non-alcoholic beverage. Initially, Spirit will reserve the first three rows of its economy cabin for Go Comfy seats, CEO Ted Christie told TPG in an interview ahead of the announcement.
Finally, the Spirit Big will make the front seat experience something akin to domestic first class. Dubbed Go Big, Spirit’s most expensive new fare includes a variety of perks and amenities.
Chief among them is access to the Big Front Seat, which will be available only to buyers of this rental product. Go Big passengers will also get all the benefits of Go Comfy fares, plus a more premium food selection (including alcohol), free streaming Wi-Fi and priority check-in.
“It will now be marketed like a commercial and traditional business-class product,” Christie said. He added that the new Go Big experience builds on the “tremendous success” of Big Front Seat.
As part of the rebranding, Spirit is working to position Go Big fares as domestic first-class fares. It wants travelers to see these seats when filtering for premium cabins on online travel agencies and flight search websites, Matt Klein, Spirit’s chief commercial officer, told TPG.
These rebranded Big Front seats are designed to compete with what American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines, and Alaska Airlines offer at the end of their planes. All of these carriers offer the same first-class recliners for big front seats, but their service offerings are more extensive than the go big product. The more than 750-mile long route will include full meal service, as well as dedicated flight attendants and a separate lavatory.
All new Spirit fares will be available to book from August 16 and the full Go Big and Go Comfy onboard experiences will begin from August 27.
While Spirit hopes to sell as many of its new premium fare bundles as possible, those seats don’t always sell. Rather than let those seats vacate, Rana Ghosh, Spirit’s chief transformation officer, told TPG that “behind the scenes, we intend to take a surprise and delight approach, especially with cardholders and some of our status members. [to upgrades] That we will come out in time.”
Spirit’s new fares look more like something you’d find on a major network airline than one of the country’s big budget carriers. That’s by design, Christie said; He added that these fare bundles are what tourists expect to buy these days.
“We’re reacting to what the market is telling us about what’s important. Spirit is moving as quickly as possible to get those products to its people,” he said.
Spirit announced customer-friendly improvements earlier this year, and all of those changes will be included with the new fare structure. That is, all tickets can be Changed or canceled without fee (subject to possible fare difference) in exchange for travel vouchers that expire one year after issue. Also, the weight limit for standard checked bags has increased to 50 pounds.
Spirit’s new boarding groups
Spirit is also revamping the boarding process to accommodate these new fares and reduce turnaround time between flights. The airline is starting a five-group process from August 27.
Priority boarding will include groups 1 and 2, limited to those purchasing Go Big and Go Comfy fares, Free Spirit Gold and Silver elite members, Free Spirit cobranded credit card holders and active duty US service members and their families.
It’s unclear how Spirit will break up groups 3, 4 and 5, but we’ll update this story if the carrier provides more details.
Spirit initiates priority check-in
We’ve come full circle from the days when Spirit charged travelers extra to print their boarding passes at the airport.
Beginning August 27, Spirit will introduce priority check-in lanes at more than 20 airports nationwide. The lane will allow the airline’s most premium travelers to have front-of-the-line access to check-in agents.
Eligible travelers who can use the Priority Check-in Lane include those who purchase a Go Big fare or who are Free Spirit Gold Elite members or cobranded credit card holders.
Bottom line
Changes come in the midst of a struggle for the soul. Not only is the airline underperforming financially, but it also took a major hit from the US Department of Justice when the agency successfully Blocked Spirit’s proposed merger with JetBlue.
All of that, along with rising costs, has some of the biggest names in aviation believing that ultra-low-cost carriers are on the verge of bankruptcy. “They’re going out of business,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said on a recent episode. “The Air Show” podcast When asked about the future of ultra-low-cost carriers.
Spirit is on a journey to transform the passenger experience as it seeks to return to profitability. This includes several customer-friendly policy adjustments, and is now the strategy behind this massive fare rebranding.
Spirit and its ultra-low-cost peers must do what they can to survive in an environment in which major network carriers are competing more closely with their basic economy fares and more extensive networks. In fact, Spirit’s larger ultra-low-cost competitor, Frontier Airlines, made similar policy adjustments earlier this year.
According to Christie, these new changes allow Spirit to “offer some new things that will really give us an opportunity to compete more effectively in a broader range of product segments.”
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