I Pledge Allegiant (to Florida at least)
This year's experience goes smoothly — what's the fun in that?
One of the most-read articles on this moderately popular airline blog was our piece about the inner conflict we felt booking Allegiant again for summer vacation this year. Our entire traveling party is still traumatized by the actively hostile treatment we received at check-in in Fort Lauderdale last June, but not traumatized enough to eschew non-stop flights at ideal times for a decent price.1
Needless to say, we were bracing for the worst from the jump. As we tell our friends: when ultra low-cost point-to-point airlines like Allegiant “work,” they are a great value.2 The problem is when things don’t work. There is no alternate hub to route you through or spare aircraft to swap in for your flight. You basically have to sit there and take it, errrr, wait. If you fly enough, you’ve certainly passed a gate full of downtrodden Allegiant (or Frontier or Spirit) passengers waiting for their inbound flight from Punta Gorda.3
However, our flight from Lexington was on-time, and even better, the check-in agents were incredibly friendly. So friendly, in fact, that we asked if they could transfer to FLL for our return trip.4 Our flight left on time, our extra legroom seats were perfectly fine, and we really didn’t mind shelling out $26 for a half-bottle of wine and some shelf-stable charcuterie. We could overlook the fact that the carpet on this brand new 737-8200(?) was already a mess.5
But, we still had to return. This was going to be all the more difficult after having spent 5 nights at sea in the warm embrace of a mouse-based company where the service is incredible, if not flawless.
Adding to the return angst was the fact that we would have to kill several hours at FLL due to Allegiant’s inability to check bags more than three hours before departure.6 It’s one thing to deal with bad service, it’s another to have to sit in the airport nervously eating Starbucks Egg Bites, bracing yourselves mentally for that pending interaction.
At 90 minutes before departure, we decided to make our move. We had worked up our courage and made our way to the priority line. The priority line had a party of 10 ahead of us, so we shifted over to the regular line. Would this be a mistake?
Everything was fine.
That was it — not super friendly, but not hostile. Bags were checked, tags were thrown away (not torn), and we even got a “have a nice flight.” We exhaled many sighs of relief as we made our way to the gate.
We boarded our return (also on time) and even got a free garlic and herb Savory Bites snack mix on the flight for our extra legroom seats. (Where was this on the flight down?!)
So kudos to the folks at Allegiant, who aside from a (really) dirty carpet and a missing bag of Savory Bites, performed quite well this past week. We’ll never book an Allegiant itinerary without some level of caution, but perhaps our guard will be down just a little next time … but not too much.
The vision of the check-in agent performatively tearing baggage claim checks in our faces ranks up there in all-time ridiculous travel moments for us — and there is no shortage of nominees
As super route map nerds, we’re always impressed by Allegiant’s reach into smaller markets where we might even know the airport code — that’s deep
It is also worth noting that Allegiant cut over 60 routes this summer — it’s a tough environment for all carriers
Quote from LEX check-in agent: “They’re not even nice to me in Florida!”
We knew that Allegiant liked to pack almost 200 people onto its new 737 MAX-es, but were unaware of this (funky) new model designator
In fairness to G4, almost every airline at FLL has some time-limit on early bag-checking due to the almost daily frequency of hundreds of cruise passengers arriving at the same time
Note #4 for the win