First off, I like Allegiant's no frills approach, and the convenience afforded by the fact that they fly out of some remote and obscure airports.
I do NOT like the fact that they do not add the $16.99 pp 'convenience' fee for booking online to the cost of the fare when it is displayed on their calendar grid.
Yesterday I priced a round trip flight with hotel from FNL to LAS for 7/8 through 7/10, and the total cost was around $160pp, rt before the 'convenience' fee was added. Fine, I'll buy the tickets at the airport to avoid paying the 'convenience fee'. Not so fast. Their ticket counter at FNL is open from noon to 1pm. I'd missed the deadline. Fine, I'll go today. But wait! Today, the cost of the trip has jumped about $100 due to an increase in airfares! I'm glad I checked before I made the drive to the airport on my lunch break.
Funny thing is, when I priced the airfare yesterday through Kayak, the least expensive rt for those dates was around $360pp. On a whim, I search again today, and it's now $160pp rt from DEN via US and CO. And I have status with US.
Allegiant lost that booking. The airfare on US/CO is LESS than Allegiant, and after booking 2 nights at the same hotel as their package, the net cost was the same. I have more flexibility in the event of irrops or a missed flight, since Allegiant only has one flight per day. The outbound leg of my itinerary connects through PHX - a bit of an inconvenience compared to Allegiant's direct flight, but I'll arrive much earlier anyway. My only loss is that I have an extra 45 minutes of driving to DEN, but the upgrade on US should more than make up for that
I didn't realize there would be that much of a change in fares going from a 22 day advance purchase to a 21 day advance purchase.