Flair is a weird airline. They use to be mostly a charter airline flying working in and out of the oil patch and the odd flight for a tour company into a sun destination. Then someone decided to run it as a discount airline. I had this weird situation of needing to fly from Vancouver to Edmonton and because of timing and both AC and WS being overbooked they were the only option. It was an 737-400. I booked and pre-paid for some package they offered the combined a printed boarding pass and a checked bag.

At the check-in counter the person guarding the queue put up a lot of resistance to me not having checked in online because I would be "charged" if I approached the drop off within a boarding pass in hand and wanted to save me the fee. She finally looked at my ticket and was surprised it included a printed boarding pass. They had great difficulty topdressing the fee. I was then allowed to go into the empty line. At the gate it was a constant stream of announcements on how to save money by paying for the carry on before boarding started because it would cost more a few minutes later. That would have been ok, it were not for the flight being an hour late proving more time for the same announcements. The on board announcements were all about the buy on board and how to save money on this combo or that. However if you actually try to buy anything you discover they only accept credit cards and the credit card reader does not work so despite the endless announcements they can't actually sell you anything.

I flew WS in the early days, Flair is nothing like the early WS or even Rouge. WS usually had their act together. When WS screwed up (and they did that early on) the staff understood what happened, would apologies and try to make things right. This ultra low cost airlines have a major problem with service recovery. It is almost like they don't train there staff in any customer service skills. I am fearful of entering any aircraft with a Swoop logo on it.