I only had the chance to fly Spirit Airlines once in my life and their well-deserved reputation for cheapness and screwing things up had me very concerned.
We all remember the stories of crazy baggage allowances and being charged for everything, including supplemental oxygen, and using the bathrooms on the planes.
But in October, 2017, Ihad the opportunity to fly them from Oakland to LAX and back. How could they possibly screw up a one hour flight?
And I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised, they got me where I needed to go when I needed to go.
It turns out that the worst part of using Spirit was actually getting from Foster City to OAK for the flight 🤔
I almost didn’t make it, Whew!
The important thing was that Spirit got me there and back with no problems, and even though I never had the pleasure of flying them again, they served their purpose.
Why did the Spirit move me? Well, my brother-in-law had recently acquired tickets to the NLCS game in Dodger Stadium in 2017 (Dodgers vs. The Cubs) and called me with less than forty eight hours notice to ask if I wanted to come and join him. Sounds like fun!
Only there was one small problem. I absolutely positively had to be back in the Bay area in time to catch an international flight to Olomouc, CR, the following Tuesday to help repatriate a Torah scroll back to its home community.
Spirit Airlines was by far an away the cheapest option to get down to LA and so I so I swallowed hard and bought a ticket. I figured how could Spirit Airlines screw up for a 1-hour flight?
My paranoia, and needing to catch that international flight a few days later, caused me to have at least three backup options, including a rental car reservation to drive back to San Francisco if need be if somehow they ended up canceling or delaying a flight home.
I showed up at OAK with a backpack with the single change of underwear, basic toiletries and almost nothing in it to make sure that I didn’t run afoul of Spirit’s crazy carry-on rules.
Oh, and as for the NLCS ballgame, all the Dodger fans went home happy that night as the Dodgers beat the Cubs when Justin Turner hit what was, at the time, the first walk off home, run in the playoffs for the Dodgers since Kurt Gibson hit his iconic World Series home run 29 years to the day.
The Tao of Steve 