Originally Posted by
bajrbajr
Yea... they are the CIC fees, or "Carrier Interface Charge" which is just an internet-booking fee.
I avoid this by purchasing many of my tickets are the airport counter.
Its kinda funny that the major airlines charge more to purchase a ticket at the airport, but Frontier (and Spirit I think) charge less at the airport.
Yeah, they obviously don't WANT you to go to the airport to buy the tickets, but Spirit seems to have figured out this was a way to legally add the tax-free (for them) fee and Frontier has copied them. Obviously, not many people do their ticketing at the airport, so the airline comes out ahead.
Buying tickets at the airport isn't always so easy, though. This summer, I had an extra hour to kill at the airport and I was going to buy my family some really cheap Spirit tickets (really cheap once I removed the fees). I even checked in advance to make sure there were no flights leaving around that time, so the counter would be quiet. But when I got to the counter, it was pure chaos, with dozens and dozens of people on line. Spirit was having some irregular ops that day. There was no way I was going to stand on an endless line (instead of sitting in an airport lounge), so I bailed. It turned out to be a good thing, though, because a few days later WN matched the fare; with my WN Companion card, it turned out to be about the same cost, and I got to avoid flying Spirit!
Originally Posted by
klanfa
Actually there are % off sales at Spirit, appearing about once a week.
Right, but until recently, they weren't things like 75% off.