Spirit drops base fares, turns big front seat into ‘business class’ in major makeover – The Points Guy

While Airbus jets will still be painted yellow, nearly everything else about Spirit Airlines’ passenger experience will soon be reimagined.

The Dania Beach, Fla.-based carrier announced Tuesday what may be its biggest business strategy shift yet.

Spirit is officially ditching its traditional fare structure and replacing it with four new segmented fare products as part of a revamped passenger experience and an effort to reverse its precarious financial situation.

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There’s a lot to digest, and you can find all the details below.

4 new Spirit fares and products

Spirit is launching four new fare products designed to appeal to a broad range of travelers.

The new fare products include various ancillary services and amenities. The lowest-priced offering is the Go fare, which largely replicates the existing Spirit experience.

With this fare, you will receive one ticket and one personal item. You will need to purchase all your accessories separately, such as seat assignments, checked bags and snacks. Passengers traveling on Go fares will not be allowed to bring a regular-sized carry-on bag and will not even have the option to pay to bring one. Therefore, those who wish to bring a regular-sized carry-on bag will need to purchase a different fare product or pay to check their bag.

Spirit’s cheapest offering will be the Go Savvy package. This package includes one standard-size carry-on or one checked bag, as well as a standard seat assignment. Snacks, beverages and onboard internet access will be available for an additional fee.

The airline will then offer two new premium fares including innovative new products.

The first is the Go Comfy fare, which guarantees a blocked middle seat, priority boarding, a carry-on bag and a checked bag. These seats will also include a single choice from a small basket of snacks and a non-alcoholic beverage. Initially, Spirit will reserve the first three rows of its economy cabin for Go Comfy seats, CEO Ted Christie told TPG in an interview ahead of the announcement.

Finally, Spirit will revamp the Big Front Seat experience to make it more like domestic first class. Called Go Big, Spirit’s new most expensive fare includes a variety of perks and amenities.

These benefits include access to the Big front seat, which will be reserved exclusively for those purchasing this fare. Go Big travellers will also enjoy all the benefits of the Go Comfy fare, as well as a selection of premium food and beverages (including alcohol), free streaming Wi-Fi and priority check-in.

“It will now be marketed and sold as a traditional business class product,” Christie said. He added that the new Go Big experience builds on the “tremendous success” of the Big Front Seat.

As part of the rebranding, Spirit is working to position Go Big fares as first-class fares on domestic flights. The company wants travelers to see these seats when they search for premium cabins on online travel agencies and flight search sites, Matt Klein, Spirit’s chief commercial officer, told TPG.

These rebranded Big Front Seats are designed to compete with American Airlines, Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and Alaska Airlines, which offer lie-flat first-class seats similar to the Big Front Seat, but their service offerings are more comprehensive than the Go Big product. Many trips over approximately 750 miles include full meal service, as well as a dedicated flight attendant and separate lavatories.

All new Spirit fares will be available for booking starting August 16, with the full Go Big and Go Comfy onboard experiences rolling out August 27.

Spirit hopes to sell as many new premium packages as possible, but those seats won’t always sell out. Rather than letting those seats go empty, Spirit’s chief transformation officer Rana Ghosh told TPG that “behind the scenes, we intend to take, particularly with cardmembers and with some of our core members, a surprise and delight approach (to upgrades) that we’ll roll out over time.”

Spirit’s new fares are more like those found on major airlines than on the nation’s big budget carriers. That’s by design, Christie said. He added that these are the fare packages travelers expect to buy today.

“We’re responding to what the market is telling us about what’s important. Spirit is moving as quickly as possible to deliver those products to our customers,” he said.

Spirit announced a series of improvements for customers earlier this year, and all of these changes will be included in the new fare structures. That’s right, all tickets can be changed or canceled without fees (subject to any fare difference) in exchange for a travel voucher that expires one year after it’s issued. Additionally, the weight limit for a standard checked bag has been increased to 50 pounds.

Spirit’s New Boarding Groups

Spirit is also revamping the boarding process to accommodate the new fares and reduce turnaround time between flights. The airline is introducing a five-group process starting August 27.

Priority boarding will include Groups 1 and 2, which will be limited to those purchasing Go Big and Go Comfy fares, Free Spirit Gold and Silver elite members, Free Spirit co-branded credit card holders and active-duty U.S. military members and their families.

It’s not yet clear how Spirit will divide up Groups 3, 4 and 5, but we’ll update this story if the carrier provides more details.

Spirit Launches Priority Check-In

We’re going back to the days when Spirit charged travelers extra to print their boarding passes at the airport.

Beginning August 27, Spirit will introduce priority check-in lanes at more than 20 airports across the country. The lane will give the airline’s most privileged travelers priority access to a check-in agent.

Eligible travelers who can use the priority check-in lane include those who purchase a Go Big fare or are Elite Free Spirit Gold members or co-branded credit card holders.

In conclusion

The moves come as Spirit has been going through a difficult time. Not only has the airline posted disappointing financial results, but it also suffered a major blow from the U.S. Department of Justice, when the agency successfully blocked Spirit’s proposed merger with JetBlue.

All of this, combined with rising costs, has led some of the biggest names in aviation to believe that ultra-low-cost airlines are headed for bankruptcy. “They’re going bankrupt,” United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said on a recent episode of “The Air Show” podcast when asked about the future of ultra-low-cost airlines.

Spirit has been transforming the passenger experience in an effort to return to profitability. That has involved a series of customer-friendly policy adjustments, and it’s now the strategy behind this massive fare rebranding.

Spirit and its ultra-low-cost competitors must do what they can to survive in an environment where major network carriers are increasingly competing with their basic economy fares and larger networks. In fact, Spirit’s larger ultra-low-cost rival, Frontier Airlines, made similar policy adjustments earlier this year.

According to Christie, these new changes allow Spirit to “come up with some new things that are really going to give us the opportunity to be more competitive in a broader range of product segments.”

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