I didn’t think anything of it until I did some research after a maintenance delay of my flight caused me to miss my connecting flight. I found many complaints about overweight baggage fees at Air Tran in particular!How could such a thing be proven? BINGO! My bag was delayed, too, and had to be sent to me via Fed. Ex. two days later. Looked on the Fed. Ex. tag attached to my bag when it arrived. There it was—WEIGHT: 35 lbs. PROOF that my bag had not gained any weight after all—there was a problem with the Air Tran baggage scale!

Let’s see…a charge of $39 is possible if your bag is over the 50 pound weight limit and $79 if the bag is over 70 pounds. Fortunately, I did check out the fine print on the Air Tran web site before I packed up for my trip. I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t even close to the limit. BUT, are others so inclined? OR, do most people get socked by surprise by this additionally imposed fee?

I suspect that the latter is the case. I ponder—how much money would Air Tran be expected to take in with those miscalibrated scales???? No fuzzy math here—they could rake in quite a bit of pocket change this way!

Now…the real question is does Air Tran do this knowingly? Isn’t this FRAUD, if so? Tell me that they allow the scales to be miscalibrated like that for days on end…and I’ll tell you that I think this is fraudulent!

Let your experiences be known!

Good luck.

There is a 2-dollar per bag fee at Orlando to use curbside service. This is addition to the 10-dollar each way charge per bag (5-dollars each way if you buy a baggage credit online).

I always use curbside check in when I can and hand the person handling my bags a tip.

The sign at Orlando International clearly states that “gratuity is not included” in the two dollar per bag ding that hit you with.

I am now finding cheaper airfare to many areas on Southwest and they don’t charge for bags.

Unless it is a huge price differential, I will no longer fly Spirit with their hidden fees.

The two bucks a bag hit at Orlando is the final straw.

Our combined experiences with them were so horrible I would rather fly ANY other at any price. Everyone said, NEVER AGAIN. Actually with all their $9 flight promotions, they are charging exactly what their service is worth.
You might wonder what the full fare customers should expect when half the flight is probably filled with those $9 ones. It shows in the lack of cleanliness (trash was everywhere), service, attitude, organization and timeliness.

Their employees are showing the effect of unhappy customers. Rarely do they smile and the few enthusiastic ones we met will certainly be drawn down to the level of the others soon. On several occasions they were rude and obnoxious to us and other travelers.
On one occasion, in response to a innocent question from a passenger, one attendant responded with a rude “do it because I say so”. A rechecking baggage agent, after four of us waited an hour in a “RE”-checking line, moved from the window we had moved to in front of her to another, 2 windows away. When we asked what was going on and remarked that she was at our window a second ago, she responded “well, now I am here” and made us move everything over to her, past TWO EMPTY WINDOWS. Why? you might ask. I guess “because she said so”. At one point the baggage manager threw his walkie talkie across the room because he was so frustrated that the others had let baggage pile up while he was on break.

Flight attendants spent 45 minutes, after the entire plane was seated and after the departure time had passed, rearranging all the overheads to get ONE bag to fit. When we asked in desperation if we were going to leave soon so we could make our ONLY connection, the response was ‘all the flights arrive and depart AT THE SAME TIME”. WOW, that Ft Laud. airport must be really something to do that! Maybe that explains why so many people complain about missed connections and “extortion” prices demanded when they do. Another time we waited an entire hour, after departure time, for a “weather report”, they said, but as soon as an obvious VIP couple arrived and sat in the first 2 plush first class seats, miraculously the report arrived and we left.

It took 3 hours in Ft Lauderdale to connect to our Atlanta flight….Even though we waited in line a half hour at immigration, afterward, it still took another full hour to get our bags for customs. Then it took One hour in rechecking lines (not required by most other airlines after customs because others have “automatic” rechecking where you just hand your bag off). In Atlanta, at midnight, with hardly any other flights coming in, it still took over an hour to get luggage.

The car rental agencies told us we were lucky to get our luggage, because that was a frequent problem. However one in our group NEVER got his luggage and went without for the whole trip. Spirit did nothing and in fact NEVER answered their phone in Costa Rica for the entire week. The only travelers from the club (4 others on the trip) who were happy with their flights flew OTHER airlines, for nearly the same price. I just tried to reach Spirit to cancel my Spirit membership and, of course, could not get through, anywhere. In fact, their system just said nobody was available and just hung up.

I met countless people in all the lines with similar experiences. They all said “NEVER AGAIN”.

There is no email address to write to, so what do you do when you have a problem? Well, with Spirit Airlines, nothing. They are like their name implies “ghosts”. I expect they will give up the “ghost” soon, once all the suckers are driven off, like us.

And yes, you might wonder what is going on “under the hood”.