Nows and Forevers

Spirit Airlines is no more. I only ever flew Spirit Airlines three times, once in 2008 and another time a few years ago. Both were memorable.

Spirit got a lot of abuse over the years. Remember the 2024 “Saturday Night Live” parody ad mocking Alaska Airlines for the jet that lost a cabin door inflight? “Still better than Spirit” was the tag line.

Spirit helped usher in the era of the ultra-low cost carrier, and made it more affordable to fly. It was controversial, but it also had its fans. It opened up scheduled airline service to markets that hadn’t had them before or for a long time. And most importantly, it never had a fatal plane crash in its 36 years of operation.

That’s saying something.

I had one good experience with Spirit and a head-shaking moment. The other flight was an average flight.

The head-shaking moment came years ago, on my first flight on Spirit, out of New York-LaGuardia, which was my home airport at the time. It had a nonstop down South where no one else did, so I booked the flight. I picked my seat, which was 4A, online weeks before takeoff. I went through security, went through the boarding process and got onto the jet to find my seat.

Except there was no 4A. There was no row 4 at all.

Turns out Spirit had just begun its “Big Front Seat” premium service and in the front of the plane had ripped out some of the rows to get those bigger seats in. Row 4 was one of them. No one mentioned it or alerted me until I was looking for Row 4. I was a little surprised but even more surprised when I was asked to go to the front and wait to see if the jet would be full. If it was, then I was out of luck.

Turns out I didn’t have to wait long. The flight attendants felt sorry for me and gave me one of the Big Front Seats, and then free snacks the whole trip.

It was a nice save, I thought.

I chuckled about the missing Row 4 but it didn’t bother me any. When I ended up flying Spirit again, about 15 years later, I actually was impressed with the airline. About a half hour after takeoff, the jet went through an extended period of rough air. It was one of the worst bouts of turbulence I’ve gone through, and I’ve gone through a lot. Stuff was bouncing, things were flying. A woman had been trapped in the bathroom and she tried to get to her seat, which was about two rows from ours. A flight attendant got out of his seat, ran to her (which was no mean feat), and then used his body to shield her and to keep her safe.

He saved her from serious injury.

What’s the common through line between those two incidents? The people. I saw Spirit Airlines flight attendants go above and beyond. And it’s those people, and all of the employees and passengers of Spirit Airlines, who I’m thinking of right now.