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Comment by Gabriel54 | Hacker News Reader

I've flown on almost all of the major airlines in the US and Spirit was always pleasantly better than expected compared to the horrible experiences I've had on other airlines. I don't see why people are bashing on Spirit. Flying in the US is uniformly terrible and there is no "luxury" option (unless you consider getting free peanuts or crackers with your $500 ticket a luxury).

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>Flying in the US is uniformly terrible

No, it isn't. It's uniformly terrible when you choose the cheapest option which coincidentally is the driving force behind air travel reducing extra comforts.

It very much is, compared to other countries. In Europe and other places they might feed you two full meals in economy the time it takes SFO to NY. Here, you get puke-inducing "pretzels" and half a plastic cup of water.

In that regard, Spirit was refreshingly honest because they didn't even pretend to care.

There is no intra-Europe flight as long as SF is to NY. There is no narrow body flight that serves two full meals in economy in Europe. There are practically no wide-body intra-Europe flights, certainly none that serve any meals. Most flights in Europe are super short and nearly all of them are on narrow body planes that don't have the capacity to serve meals for everyone.

Why would anyone want an in-flight meal? Seems to me that's the first thing to cut costs. The human body can survive not eating for 10 hours.

speaking for myself, i fly every other week, sometimes i don't care for food, other times i could be hungover or hungry flying into or out of a full workday and meetings. Realizing that a nice hot meal or two are sometimes pretty amazing when flying e.g. Turkish, I personally would love the ex-Virgin America approach (RIP another legend) where I could punch a button on the screen and they would bring a meal on demand if/when i need it, without having to stay awake waiting for the stupid cart or bothering other people too much. But, here we have United that offers nothing.

> There is no intra-Europe flight as long as SF is to N [...] There are practically no wide-body intra-Europe flights, certainly none that serve any meals

That depends on how you define "Europe".

Europe-the-continent, Athens to Reykjavik is roughly the same distance as NY to SF.

If you define Europe as "Any territory belonging to a European country", then the longest domestic flight is between Paris and Saint-Denis, Réunion. It's about 9000 Km, which is twice the distance between NY and SF.

Tenerife is quite a popular destination, and is also relatively far from the mainland.

It’s not the airline, it’s the other passengers.

Curious how many times have you flown Spirit?

I've flown Frontier a few times and the most recent time they were delayed by like 5 hours (maintenance issue, no replacement plane) and once they finally started boarding, they plucked out like 40 people whose bags were "too big" and had to pay $100 at the gate so they can board with them. You have to have extreme contempt for your customers to waste even more time after you already wasted 1000+ human hours just on this flight alone, let alone all the subsequent flights that day that will be impacted because your operations rely on every plane being on time. No apology at any point either.

Spirit is no different. They hate you and they make sure you know it.

I can vouch for Spirit. I've Never had any issue on Spirit and flew 20 different flights out of one of their hubs in Baltimore. Spirit no doubt has those crazy long layover flight u can choose which I've never booked. Heck no, just book their non stop flights.

I can't vouch for frontier I've never flown with them ..not yet at least.

By that metric, Delta is the worst. American and Southwest are much better.

I'm in Europe and I always liked flying on Ryanair. They're not bad if you just pay for what you want. You have a lot of food choices where 'premium' airlines give you a sandwich you might not like. You can buy priority boarding without having to accumulate frequent flying points. And they're still cheaper than the pompous airlines when you pay for the addons.

If you try to get the things without paying, eg bringing too much baggage, that's when they fleece you. But just follow the rules and it's fine.

> Spirit was always pleasantly better than expected compared to the horrible experiences I've had on other airlines

How were your reclining seats? And how long were your flights?

Your standards are in the basement if you think Spirit is a classy ride. Horrible experience.

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