Spirit gets mixed grades on its first DOT report card
Spirit Airlines, the fee-happy airline travelers love to hate, got its first government report card today, and the results were mixed.
The airline, which offers bargain fares and a pile of extra charges for everything from carry-on bags to water and soda, posted the second highest rate of customer complaints and was third from the bottom in on-time performance but was the third best airline for baggage handling, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation's monthly Air Travel Consumer Report.
Spirit is included in the report rankings for the first time this year after hitting an industry revenue threshold last year.
Spirit, which has acknowledged its high rate of customer complaints and last year began a Spirit 101 campaign to let travelers know just what they do and don't get with the price of a Spirit ticket, logged 7.99 complaints per 100,000 passenger boardings in January. That was topped only by Frontier Airlines, which last year switched to Spirit's fee-heavy business model. Frontier logged 8.61 complaints per 100,000 passenger boardings, more than double the figure from a year earlier.
The industry average was 1.85 per 100,000 boardings in January. Alaska, Southwest and Delta had the fewest rate of customer complaints among the 14 airlines in the report, each with fewer than 1 mishandled bag per 100,000 boardings.
Spirit, ranked 10th in on-time performance, with 71.9% of its flights arriving on time in January. Delta was No. 1 at 86.1%. The industry average was 76.8%.
The bright spot for Spirit in January was baggage handling. The airline reported 2.35 mishandled bags per 1,000 passenger boardings, behind only Virgin America (0.84) and JetBlue (1.93). The industry average was 4.33.
Dawn Gilbertson is a travel reporter at The Arizona Republic and the author of that newspaper's Now Departing blog. Her content also is occasionally featured here in Ben Mutzabaugh's Today in the Sky blog. The Republic is owned by Gannett, parent company of Paste BN.