Infrequent travelers in CLE love charter airlines to LAS, Florida, the Bahamas, and CUN.

I have too. My IAH-BTR and BTR-IAH EUAs this week have taken forever to come. You'd think that a 6:15 AM Thursday morning BTR-IAH flight would be a no-brainer for an EUA for a Platinum, but CO held it back much longer than my IAH-ATL and ATL-IAH flights on the same trip. It might have something to do with the flight being CO's lone mainline flight on the route though.

Looks like CO has a special they didnt advertise on the CO.com specials list. LGA-DFW this weekend Sat-Mon $192 a/i. Thats a decent deal as you have to layover in Houston and net about 3,800 eqm's.

You mean people actually fly that airline?!?

I have yet to actually see one of their planes in person.

Can anyone here take the award for never having been on any sort of charter/LCC?

Unfortunately, I have to admit to taking a trip on Spirit (ACY-FLL) during their very early days (late 90s when they flew MD-80s). It was not a pleasant experience!

I know the feeling. At least some of my family members, like one of my sisters who has just started to vacation internationally in the last year, have the sense to ask me for advice before jumping into something that's guaranteed to be a bad experience.

I believe next weekend will be my first (on Spirit) but thats only b/c I got the $0 ticket last month.

I had never taken a charter until late last December. But my desire to get in one last 727 flight clouded my judgement and so I hopped a one-way DFW-LAS flight on the recently deceased Champion Air, the final frontier of 727 passenger operations in the US. It wasn't an awful experience, but I didn't feel the need to rush out and repeat it either. Fortunately I managed to get an exit row seat in the first row of the plane with tons of legroom. But it was PACKED, with I think about 175 passengers crammed into a former NW 727 that would probably have only held about 140 passengers in its earlier life with NW. We departed and arrived right on time, the flight crews were very friendly, and the plane was quite clean. In fact, it looked pretty darn good for an aircraft that was approaching its 30th birthday, and had seen nearly a decade of charter service. I've seen far worse looking A-320s that aren't even 20 years old flying at NW.

As for LCCs, I've done WN many times, AirTran once, but that's it. No Spirit, SkyBus, or anything else of the sort. I did have one flight with WS from YYZ-YUL in 2006, which was actually great.

As I mentioned earlier, there is also an unadvertised LGA-IAH fare. I don't understand why CO keeps some of these a secret.

Yes.

My friends now know that if we are going to travel somewhere, I'll be flying CO regardless of how they get there. They call me a CO-wh*re... I guess there ARE worse things... ;)

I flew SWA once...never again.

I've actually had nothing but really good, if not great, flights with WN in the last year. But I've only flown HOU-LBB/MAF/MSY on them in the last 12 months. I try to avoid them on long-haul routes if at all possible.

I got on that one and cleared my upgrade for the Sat flight. Monday I couldnt even get an isle or window exit row seat for the 6:40 am flight.

I flew Spirit once... LAS-SFO. I was sure it would be my final flight.