Spirit Airlines Ridiculous New Fee

In the words of Jackie Chiles, this is ridiculous, preposterous, egregious, outrageous. Airlines are charging for everything from baggage fees to water consumption. Spirit Airlines is known for extremely low fares (some currently as low as $9) but at the cost of hidden fees for placing carry-ons in overhead bins and even drinking a glass of water onboard. Now they want to charge the public $16.99 each way for printing their tickets online. Online?! Their entire client-base buys tickets online, I didn’t even know you could buy tickets anywhere else.

The only reason someone would purchase their ticket at the airport would be if they were trying to be spontaneous like in movies and fly to a random city, or they are trying to flee the country. In either case, they’d still have to pay the $5 fee they plan to implement in January for every boarding pass a travel agent prints. If I were the escapee, I’d take my chances with the police before I gave in to such nonsense. The fact that society allows things like hidden fees, fine print and asterisks is bewildering to me. I’m pretty sure we’ve fought world wars over hidden fees, invaded countries because of unannounced baggage charges. We need another Boston Tea Party, only this time we’ll push Spirit planes into the water, maybe then I won’t have to pay “domestic passenger user fees”. If I plan to fly with this airline, this “$9 base fare” comes out to $64.40 with the $34 user fees and $21.40 in federal taxes and security fees. I think it’s time to occupy Spirit Airlines. That is, if they don’t also have a fee for that.