CEO Ben Baldanza recently penned a well-organized, highly reasoned, financially sound op-ed in the USA Today to passionately defend Spirit Airlines’ new fee for carry-on bags.
He laid out a detailed economic model explaining why fees for carry-on bags can lower ticket prices, cut fees for checked baggage and reduce lines at security. In the end, Baldanza says, it’s a “win-win for everyone” – and if you give his rationale enough very deep thought, maybe those fees actually make some sense.
But that’s exactly the problem – thinking – or in the case of Spirit Airlines, over-thinking.
When the average family of four booked a flight from LaGuardia to Fort Lauderdale to see Grandma for Easter, I’ll bet PhD-level economic models on airfare weren’t on their mind. These are ultra-busy, middle-class consumers who typically spend an hour at most on Priceline finding the cheapest tickets, fastest route, and most convenient departures.
“Get us there, get us home, and don’t screw us with nasty surprises.”
People may grumble when ticket prices rise; they always grumble knowing there are all sorts of taxes and fees on every ticket; and they really grumbled when airlines started charging for checked baggage and blankets. But that “Sacred Line” wasn’t crossed until now.
In over-thinking a problem facing every carrier, Spirit Airlines simply did not consider how travelers view their carry-on luggage in very personal terms. Toothbrushes, travel purses, a book for the flight, snacks for the kids, and the trusty laptop are simply off limits to what many feel is blind corporate greed.
For an airline whose entire brand is built on being consumer budget-friendly, “taxing” those items is a violation of trust from which they likely will never recover.
As proof of this prediction, I received an email from Spirit’s $9 Fare Club just two days after the carry-on fees became public. “Fly for free!” - the email’s subject line proclaimed. But upon opening it appeared the ugly catch - “Just pay for the cost of fuel”.
I have no idea what jet fuel costs and don’t have the time to research it. But if Spirit’s already messing with my electric travel razor, I don’t want to know what that fuel is going to cost! And I probably wouldn’t trust their math anyway.
That’s how Spirit is calculating the exact “fees” for carry-ons too. “It will vary”, they say. No doubt there are high-level formula’s...perhaps even to the power of Pi!
They could be splitting atoms for all we know, but in the meantime, consumers now view Spirit Airlines as greedy, tricky and perhaps even outright dishonest. If Baldanza continues to “over-think” complex math instead of using basic common sense, that list of adjectives may soon include “stupid”.
And no one is going 35,000 feet in the air with a carrier that is perceived as stupid.
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