Spirit Airlines tries to fix its image with comfier seats

Spirit Airlines, the low-cost airline that has reported the highest rate of passenger complaints, has spent the last few years improving customer service and now is trying something new: seats that the carrier touts as roomier and more comfortable.

Spirit Airlines Chief Executive Ted Christie unveiled the new seats Monday at an airline expo in downtown Los Angeles, saying they demonstrate the carrier’s commitment to budget-minded passengers.

“We are listening, that’s the message,” Christie said in an interview during the Airline Passenger Experience Expo. “We want to show them that we are interested in investing in our products in ways that they think would create value.”

The seats will be included in 60 new planes the airline plans to add to the fleet by 2021 and will be installed in 40 existing planes that will be retrofitted in the same time frame. The carrier now has a fleet of about 135 planes.

The move is part of a bigger effort by the Florida-based airline to re-create itself, about a dozen years after it launched with ultra-low fares but a long menu of fees for services such as printing out a boarding pass ($10) and upgrading to roomier seats ($25 to $175, depending on the length of the flight).

Although the fees helped the carrier collect some of the industry’s widest profit margins, Spirit Airlines’ service has also drawn the highest rate of passenger complaints…..[Read More]