Spirit Airlines App Critique

The last time I had to travel for work, I was required to travel from Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport to Orlando International Airport for a conference. Typically, I have to fly to Erie International Airport in Erie, PA, which limits my available flight selection to American Airlines, as that is the only airline that flies into or out of Erie International. In the case of flying to Orlando, options were much more available, and I ended up flying Spirit Airlines (primarily due to company policy requiring me to use, at maximum, $200 more than the cheapest flight, which resulted in either Spirit or Frontier as they are so much more affordable than any other airline). To fly with Spirit and keep track of my flight, baggage, and boarding pass, I downloaded the Spirit Airlines Android app. Maybe it is my incompetence with using their app or my circumstances on how I would like to use the app that significantly differs from the general use cases of others, but I found the app somewhat frustrating.

What Spirit Does Right

I'll start with what the app does correctly: aesthetically, the application looks superb! The navigation between the different tabs at the bottom of the screen is highly responsive and quick. If you have an active boarding pass, the app will have a quick link to access it for scanning, much like many of the competition's mobile applications. Honestly, that is everything I could find that the app did a great job doing. Not to say that everything else is necessarily bad, but most of the functionality is par for the course with major airline mobile apps.

What Spirit Should Do Better

There are some things Spirit Airlines needs to change to make the app better. Many of my frustrations come from the fact that I frequently leave the mobile app to perform duties that should not require me to visit their website. For instance, look at the following screenshot:

Screenshot Showing the "Account" Tab

There is minimal functionality here in the mobile app when viewing your account. The "Help" button allows you to chat with a chatbot with limited responses (which requires you to visit their website), an email button (that brings you to their website and also does not provide any email addresses - instead, it asks you to use the chatbot), view phone numbers if you can't get your issue solved without human intervention, an FAQ (which brings you to their website and has a few outdated articles), a button for legal information (which also brings you to their website), and an ability to delete your account (which, as you can imagine, also brings you to their website). So, out of the six buttons, five of them require leaving the app. If you return to the main profile screen, as in the screenshot, the "Profile" button brings you to their website. "Settings" brings you to a page where you can change three app settings (primarily for notifications and location services) and sign out of the currently logged-in account. The only impressive button was the "Snacks + Drink Menu," which brings you to a very well-designed, graphical menu where you can peruse the prices of on-flight purchases.

Moving on to the "My Trips" tab, we see a limited menu to view your trip.

Screenshot Showing the "My Trips" Tab

The screenshot shows us the ever-persistent Mastercard® offer, which is seen prominently in two of the four tabs. According to the FAQ, if you need a receipt for a previous flight, you can simply enter your old reservation confirmation code and your last name to pull up information on your purchases. I attempted to do so, and it resulted in the following error:

Screenshot Showing an Error

So, it appears the only functional button on this tab is the "Book a Trip" button, which only serves to bring you to the "Book" tab at the bottom of the screen. Overall, the app has some basic functionality. Still, it feels like they put all their time into adding functions that let the customer spend money and not adding many valuable functions for the end user. My first suggestion would be to keep more of the functionality in the app, first and foremost. Secondly, allow the customer to find prior flights and retrieve the information as stated in the FAQ. Finally, extraneous advertisements for the Mastercard® offer should be removed, as they come across as annoying and take up screen real estate that could better be used for functionality. Although this has little to do with the app, I also experienced strife when signing up for an account in the first place. When attempting to sign up using the website, the "submit" button appeared to do nothing after filling out the form. There was no indication of an issue. When I signed up on the app, I received an error code letting me know I had an illegal character in my chosen password (a space character for interested people). The fact the app was the only source of letting me know the error, coupled with the fact that the password requirements said nothing about not allowing spaces, left me frustrated when trying to simply sign up for the account.

Conclusion

Maybe I should have heeded the warnings of the awful user experience when attempting to give them my money, but I still traveled with Spirit. The flight did get me to Orlando, but only after thirteen hours of sitting on the same flight that originally was quoted to take only three hours.