FB_

Thanks for letting me know. I'll probably be booking more flights soon.

z88049

I have noticed the exact same issue myself. They quote a slightly lower fare at the airport but it is higher than it should be with the removal of the Passenger Usage Fee. At the airport, they say the fare also has a Fuel Charge which is not quoted in the fare when booking online.

Seems like intentional evasion of a portion of the federal excise tax on airfare that was coincided with the release of their higher Passenger Usage Fee. I'm filing form 3949-A with the IRS (used to report information on tax evasion) and would encourage anyone else who has seen this issue to do so.

This doesn't seem to happen on all fares - particularly cheaper fares seem to have this occur.

mrahul

ciaohound

The $9 fare club tickets only can be bought on line. To purchase your tickets at the airport and thus do away with the passenger usage fee of $39.00 or so for R/T can NOT be purchased on line. 99% of the time the fare is usually cheaper buying at the airport but then you have to pay more if you're checking a bag or paying for a carry-on bigger than the allowable size (for free).So you win some and lose some. If you're like us and always take a free small carry-on size than we buy at the airport and save almost $40 off a round trip. But we only live 15 mins from the airport!

jebr

I noticed this issue today as well for DEN - MSP. It was actually enough where it would've been cheaper to buy online! The fare online was $0.01, plus a $15.99 passenger usage fee and the relevant taxes. At the airport it was $17.68 plus the relevant taxes - the flight was still $0.01, but there was the $6ish regulatory fee and a $10-11ish fuel fee as well. Both of those seemed to apply to the excise tax, but it still left me feeling rather cheated.

I wound up cancelling in the 24-hour free cancel window (which the agent did remind me of despite not fully realizing the disparity until I left the counter) and booking a slightly more convenient time for a few more bucks from Sun Country. Interestingly, while in line I noticed the mobile app showed a price of $54.30. I didn't drill down further into that, though.

ra7

I bought a ticket at the counter yesterday in DTW and saved closed to 21$ each way compared to the online price.

rsteinmetz70112

Has anybody quizzed Spirit about this? There appears to be an inconsistency about this that is worrying.

tatterdema

I think the inconsistency is with the person booking. If you look at my post #15 , I spell out what my experience is, and looking at most of the others, it looks like the same thing is happening. Look up the breakdown before going to the airport is my advice.

rsteinmetz70112

The inconsistancy is that these fees are not charged in every case at every station.

tatterdema

No, but if you look it up in advance, you will know about them and then be able to make the decision on going to the airport or buying online. I suppose they could change in the amount of time it takes you to get to the airport, but I doubt it would happen very often. I bought 3 different flights recently, and 1 was different than the others, but I knew that going in because I had looked up the breakdown beforehand. If I had just looked at the total price online, I would have thought they all 3 would have been the same.

btonkid12345

I have noticed this happening in Atlanta as well. In fact, I took a printout of the fare online to compare each line item.

Literally nobody, not even the Station Manager for Spirit, could explain it. They just said the price was what the system told them it was.

Its definitely systemic or even purposeful; but I'm not sure what criteria is used to offset the usage fee with fuel and other extraneous additional line items that didn't appear when booking online.

tatterdema

Ah, I see what you are talking about now. Very strange. So the fare you took from online, all broken out, did not match what they showed at the airport? The ones I bought matched exactly, but the passenger usage fee was different on some flights, which made the difference in fare.

btonkid12345

Correct. Before this last 12 months or so, I could get the breakdown online, and buy the exact same ticket at the airport with the exact same line items and amounts (except for the usage fee) at the airport.

Now, the usage fee is still removed, but two additional extraneous charges are added in its place, which offset 50% or more of the usage fee in each direction of travel. I hate it and the staff can't explain it, and it also has to be a violation of their whole excise tax exemption because they are charging more than just the fare minus the usage fee at the airport, which they shouldn't be.

It sounds like it only affects the cheapest/promo fares and that someone in their RM department is programming it as such, but its still unacceptable.

jebr

Same here. There was no fuel surcharge or "regulatory fee" when booking online, but there was when booking at the airport. Those fees did apply to the excise tax, but they weren't applied when booking online. I actually filed a DOT complaint over it because I'm pretty sure that it violates the reason that they're able to charge the Passenger Usage Fee and not pay excise tax on it.

rsteinmetz70112

All of these charges are a dodge to get around the excise tax. That they are now doing it at the airport although using different charges sure seems like tax evasion to me.