Spirit Airlines Passengers, Empty Those Pockets! Your Carrier Needs $7 Billion

At a press conference at the Dubai Air Show Tuesday, Spirit Airlines Chief Executive Officer Ben Baldanza announced the Miramar-headquartered discount carrier has signed a deal with Airbus for 45 A320neo planes and 30 A320 aircraft.

The "deal" is actually a memorandum of understanding -- short of a firm order.

Airbus' CEO John Leahy said that deal is worth $7 billion at list prices, with the wingtip configurations that Spirit requested. He and Baldanza said they hope to firm up the deal by year's end. Airbus, incidentally, is a European planemaker.

Leahy explained that the A320neo, due out in 2015, offers new engine options and other features designed to cut noise and use 15 percent less fuel than older models of the widely used A320 series of planes.

How can a no-frills airline make a fancy purchase like this from a foreign manufacturer?

Maybe cheeky Spirit plans to tack on even more a la carte charges.

The airline advertises base fares as low as $9, but if passengers want to place a carry-on bag in the overhead bin -- extra charge. If they want a glass of water -- extra charge. In January, they'll be forking over $5 for each boarding pass a ticket agent prints.

Perhaps most egregious of all from a passenger's point of view, on Nov. 8 Spirit increased its domestic "passenger usage fee" from $8.99 each way to $16.99.

It will be interesting to see what else this "discount carrier" can find in passenger habits to extract enough money to make up $7 billion.
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