The sale fares are heavily restricted, to promote new flights to the Caribbean, starting Nov. 10.
Ben Baldanza, president of Miramar-based Spirit, said that when new flights to leisure destinations are started, a lot of people want to fly the first day in one direction, but don’t want to return home in the other direction right away.
“So you end up flying empty,” Baldanza said.
The airline picked specific dates to take advantage of that tendency. The fares are selectively available between mid-November and mid-December. They have to be bought online by Nov. 7. Availability differs by flight.
Also, taxes and fees paid to the government are separate and could easily exceed the $18 fare.
Some of the routes offering the $18 fare are Detroit-Kingston, Jamaica and New York (LaGuardia)-Nassau, the Bahamas. In South Florida the routes include Fort Lauderdale-Orlando and West Palm Beach-Santo Domingo, the Dominican Republic.
Baldanza said the sale involves several thousand seats. “We don’t make money on it directly,” he said. But the ultra-cheap price gets people talking about Spirit. “I’m going to have thousands of people saying that they got a $9 fare to Jamaica,” he said.
The sale also puts new names in the company’s database for e-mail marketing campaigns for its more routine SyberSpecial sales.
Baldanza said Spirit’s Web site has been swamped with traffic since the sale was unveiled midday Monday, but that only about 15 percent of the fare seats have been sold. “We intend to sell a lot of these,” he said.
Tom Stieghorst can be reached at tstieghorst@sun-sentinel.com or 305-810-5008.
By Tom Stieghorst, Business Writer
http://www.sun-sentinel.com
