These Are Your Worst Experiences On A Budget Airline

Dirt-cheap airfare is impossible to ignore despite being fully aware of the added fees that some airlines impose to nickel and dime you. However, it only takes one rough experience to put you off flying that carrier ever again. We asked our readers last week for their worst experience on a budget airline. The comment section was filled with stories of last-minute cancellations, parents scheming for free upgrades and scummy airline practices.

Commenters delivered in ways I didn’t expect. While Frontier, Spirit and Southwest were mentioned multiple times, I was reminded of several regional carriers that deservedly collapsed or were consolidated into today’s mainline carriers. For example, a story or two was told about flying with People Express. While Newark Airport is synonymous with United Airlines today, People Express was headquartered at the New York City area airport until the carrier was purchased in 1987 by Continental Airlines, a predecessor of the modern United. Without further ado, here are your worst tales flying with low-cost carriers:

Many years ago, I was flying from Denver to Atlanta on an airline called Mark Air. There was no assigned seating, and it was like flying on a crazy bus. I was sitting in an aisle seat and a young girl was next to me. The flight attendant came to me and asked if I could swap with the young girl’s mom so she could sit with her and I said sure. I got up, the mom sat down and when I went to her seat someone else had already sat in it and the flight was full. I looked at the flight attendant and I said I am not getting off and a guy a couple of rows sitting in a middle seat jumped up and said I could have his seat. I had to sit between two very large (think Guinness world book of record fat guys on mini bikes pic) guys and one of which had horrible breath that just rolled out of him. Worst few hours ever on a flight. First and last time I ever did that and Delta all the way since then.

Submitted by: B98

In 2017, this airline called CalJet started up service between our little local airport in Carlsbad, CA and Las Vegas. Woohoo! They were selling cheap tickets, so some friends and I bought them for an event. Well, no plane showed up. And that happened the next day. And the next. CalJet blamed it on this, that, and the other — but when I looked up the tail number of their only plane using FlightAware, it was making lots of short hops around the east coast. Turned out CalJet decided they’d make more money by flying NCAA teams around and selling tickets for nonexistent flights. Then turned out that the Director of Operations had been convicted of felony credit card fraud just 6 months before — for ripping off customers in a different travel scheme in Colorado — and his dad was also involved in all kinds of financial schemes, including this one.

I got my money back. Others were not so lucky.

Submitted by: Carlsbad

I was on a work trip and had a 6 PM Silver Air flight from Jacksonville to Fort Lauderdale. Had to be in Fort Lauderdale the following morning for an important meeting. When I showed up at the airport, they delayed the flight by one hour. Then another hour. Then another. They eventually cancelled and I rented a car to drive instead, got to Fort Lauderdale at 4 AM and got a few hours of sleep before my work day. I never choose flying for anything less than a six-hour drive now.

Submitted by: Bitter65

Oh, one more: booked Spirit round trip to NOLA for a one-day work trip since they were the only direct flight option. Evening flight to NOLA, spend the night, one day of meetings then a flight home at 7 PM. A couple days before the trip, I get a notice of a time change on my return flight. I figure no big deal, these time changes are usually less than 30 minutes. Spirit moved my homebound flight forward by EIGHT HOURS two days before the trip! I had to cancel and rebook on a different airline, last minute at great expense with a layover.

Submitted by: Bitter65

My worst experience on an ULCC happened in December 2022, right before Christmas. My wife had to fly out to Los Angeles for work, and I joined her. Our flight back to Chicago was cancelled due to a winter storm hitting Illinois. Frontier said it was no big deal, they’d just get us out on the first flight in the morning.

That didn’t happen. Instead, Frontier had a bit of an operational meltdown, and we got stuck in SoCal for three days, entirely missing Christmas. Now, there are worse places to be stuck than California, but what made this suck was that we flew into one of those tiny airports that Frontier loves. There were no one-way rental cars (because I was willing to drive home), no beaches, and nothing much to see or do. We just stayed in our roach special hotel for three days, doing nothing.

It was only a year later when Frontier cancelled a bunch of flights in Chicago due to cold weather. Yet, other airlines figured out how to run their planes. I had to get to Tampa that day, so I was forced to spend about $350 to fly Spirit. So, I don’t mess with Frontier anymore.

The second-worst experience was when American Airlines had its own meltdown in 2022, which resulted in over 11,000 canceled flights and basically everyone getting stranded in Phoenix Sky Harbor for a whole day. It was so bad that there were people sleeping on the floor in the terminal. I managed to get in the worst hotel in Phoenix, and legitimately returned home from that trip with bug bites dotting my arms.

Submitted by: Mercedes Streeter

We flew PeoplExpress back in the 1980s. It was so “no-frills,” you actually had to pay in-flight. I’d love to see an airline try that today. So there we were, minutes after takeoff, and the flight attendant came by to collect our payment. My husband undid his seatbelt so he could stand up and get the wallet out of his pocket, and the attendant blew a gasket, ordering him to sit down and fasten his seatbelt! This went on for a while. They didn’t throw us out into the clouds, so I guess he must have managed to get his money out. The airline didn’t last all that much longer, as I recall.

Submitted by: Elaine

My one and only time flying Spirit: I paid for the big front seat and after boarding and settling in, was unironically and curtly asked by a flight attendant to switch seats with a family several rows back so they could all sit together. In the front? Like you couldn’t have asked other people nearby to move? Your family gets a free upgrade because other people in the main cabin won’t move? I refused since they offered me nothing to move into the main cabin and then she kind of snapped at me that I was being unreasonable which no, not really.

So, a few minutes before we take off, the FA seats one of the children from this family right next to me. Thankfully, it was a quick flight but throughout the kids’ parents just hovered in the aisle and repeatedly gave me dirty looks like I was the villain here.

Domestic air travel has gotten so awful it makes me not want to travel.

Submitted by: Bryan Fischer

There wasn’t bad weather, Frontier just decided there weren’t enough people on the flight, so they cancelled it fou4 hours before takeoff. They offered to put us on a flight getting in at 4 pm the next day. We had jobs and kids to get back to, so we had to rent a car and drive 9 hours through the night instead.

The cherry on top was the “sorry for the inconvenience” $250 voucher they sent us expired in 6 months. They literally only flew to/from our airport for four months a year, and the flight they cancelled was the last flight for the year. So we couldn’t even use that voucher if we wanted to; flights only resumed two months after it expired.

Submitted by: SnakeJG

My first and hopefully only Spirit flight. When I got to the airport, their app was down, so it was impossible to get an electronic version of the boarding pass, so you were forced to print a pass. Yes, every single person on the flight had to have the same argument with the people at the check-in desk to avoid having to pay the printed boarding pass fee. In addition, because of seemingly other possibly related issues, the check-in desk had no idea if you had already paid for your carry-on luggage, so you and everyone else had to have that discussion as well. It first struck me as strange that nobody at check-in seemed to care that they were causing delays and that people might now be late for their flight, then when I got to the gate five minutes after boarding was to have started and there was no plane or anyone from Spirit around and a board saying that the flight was “on time” I realized why they didn’t care. A little over 2.5 hours later, several visits by security/police and a now stationed pair of security/police at the gate with a still labeled as “on time” plane arrived. The entire flight crew of that aircraft left and was replaced 45 minutes later with a new flight crew for the still labeled “on time” flight. The flight was still listed as “on time” as I boarded, even though we were now four hours behind schedule. The rest of the flight was what I guess is standard Spirit cabin “comfort” with a crew that clearly didn’t want to be there or speak with passengers.

The Spirit “comfort” was, I guess, the standard seating that makes me miss old church pews, plus the slight aroma of previous passenger stomach contents. For the flight, I had the wonderful experience of the latch to the tray on the back of my seat being broken, so every bump in the flight caused it to crash down. This, as you can imagine, was fun for the person behind me since they seemed to take joy in slamming it back up each time. For cabin lighting, many on the flight got to experience one of the lights flicker, then go out and then come back on and repeat this at random intervals. This wasn’t right next to me, but just in the corner of my vision to make it distracting.

At least nothing happened when I got to my destination to keep us on the plane any longer. This flight has been to only occurrence to date in which none of the crew was near the exit when we were leaving. They just opened the door and went back to their seats.

Submitted by: Cluck