Spirit Airline Charges Passengers Extra Fees For Fire and Smoke

MIRAMAR, Fla., October 17, 2013 – The news that Spirit Airlines (NASDAQ: SAVE) charges passengers for fire and smoke, which circulated in social media in the wake of the recent Spirit flight accident, turned out to be a joke. It was traced down by FSpiritAir to online comedian Eminence Front's Twitter account @tweetcomedian.

Eminence, who has a Twitter follower base of almost four thousand, wrote “A Spirit Airlines plane caught fire shortly after takeoff today. Passengers were quickly assessed a $99 fire fee and a $39 smoke fee. ” The joke has been retweeted by many and even made it to FSpiritAir's list of Spirit Airlines inspired customers tweets ( https://www.fspiritair.com/spirit_toptweets.html).

The accident has stirred quite a considerable uproar on Twitter and other social media channels with mostly negative comments toward Spirit- the company well-known for bad customer service and blatant disregard of the public opinion. There have been several news about Spirit Airlines introducing extra charges for pre-flight engine check, smoke-free cabins, and in-flight entertainment for engine explosion & smoke show. All of them turned out to be jokes as well.

Spirit Airlines has yet to officially respond to the news regarding the accident. The only update was received from Spirit Airlines (@SpiritAirPR ) that recited the Bible by writing: “As Jesus said, Let he who is without an uncontained engine fire cast the first stone.”

It's not clear whether @SpiritAirPR has any affiliation with the company or whether Jesus actually said that, but it seems that faith plays an important role in the Spirit Airlines attitude towards safety and proper aircraft maintenance.

According to FSpiritAir representative, they received a message from a person who claimed to be a former Spirit employee. The person, who wanted to remain anonymous- apparently in fear of retribution from the company, alleged that there are serious problems with Spirit's safety operations. He wrote, “the company would try to make the mechanics to perform illegal jobs to make the airplane airworthy just to fly out in the morning”.

It's not the first allegation of this kind. In 2011, Richard Torre, a senior aircraft mechanic for Atlantic City International Airport's, and eight other mechanics sent a letter to the Federal Aviation Administration alleging that Spirit Airlines was servicing planes with improper or contaminated fluids and was not providing mechanics with proper tools to service the planes. Within five months, six of those mechanics, including Torre, were fired.

Mr. Torre, who recently filed a lawsuit in NJ Superior Court claims that “his supervisor, Steve Cohen, was signing inspection stickers in blank and giving them to mechanics to fill out, date, and use without him actually performing the inspections which he was signing off on.”

Records show Spirit has seen $152,325 in six fines since 2005 for maintenance-related issues flagged by the FAA, the largest of which was a $50,000 fine in 2008.

About Spirit Airlines

Spirit Airlines is an ultra-cheap carrier that prides itself on the reputation on being the most complaint of company in the whole industry. Being well-known for excessive customer overcharging, rampant delays, and terrible customer service, Spirit has taken the business model of “show me the money and go @$%^ yourself” to a new level, now approaching $1.3 billion in revenue.