Marcus Webb
I recently booked Spirit Airlines from Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles for $412. I later booked, and PAID FOR, a flight on the EXACT same route on the EXACT same times (6:42 AM departures) for the EXACT same day (arrival the next day) on United’s Premium Economy for $789. Why the big price difference, you ask? Two reasons. 1) The additional hidden fees that I was NOT made aware of at the time of booking the Spirit fare for $412, for which I would also be responsible to pay in addition to the fare for the flight, for a total of $96 ( the additional ‘aditional’ charges) which I discovered later. 2) All of the amenities for the fare that I booked for $789 on United for the same exact route that I had NOT included in the $412 fare I had booked on Spirit, that I would actually use on the long haul flight and, therefore, it would matter to me.
As an example I will first reference my prior post regarding cost of Spirit fares and you will see that the cost that I specified does not include the additional $96 in hidden additional fees for which I paid in addition to booking and paying for the fare on the flight. On the other hand when I looked up United’s pricing for Premium Economy on the very same flights (6:42 AM flights from Fort Lauderdale to Los Angeles, same day departures – arrive next day) three weeks later the pricing included all of the the cost of the Amenity Package items as well as all of the other fees for all of the individual Amenity Package items listed in my prior post that I used in actuality during my trip on that flight and as you can confirm by now after reading through the remainder of this post, after I booked, paid for, took, and measured each and every feature of both flights, the pricing that actually mattered and the numbers that I was really measuring for each of the flights for the two different airlines included each and every single Amenity Package fee for each of the individual items in the Amenity Package and for the flight itself.
The Hidden Fee Structure Nobody Explains Correctly
Budget airlines typically have an “unbundling” or a la carte style fee structure where they charge for the basic cost of a ticket to fly on an airplane, and in addition to that charge for each component of the flight, typically in additional fees beyond the basic fare that are not visible when looking at the fare for a flight. In my case I got charged $55 for my single roller bag, $31 for choosing two specific seats well in advance for a flight 3 weeks in the future, and $10 for not having checked in online prior to 24 hours for the flight (just forgot).
For the outbound flight to LA on premium economy flights for this route, the fare included 2 pieces of checked luggage and the passenger’s selected seat. The seat pitch for the Spirit Airlines flight booked by author for $412 was 28 inches. The seat pitch for the flight booked by author and paid for in full for $789 (based off of $789 / 2 = $394.50 for a one way fare) and seated on the exact same day and flight for 6:42am (arriving next day) in Premium Economy was 38 inches of seat pitch. That extra 10 inches of space was priceless given author’s height of 6’4” and required to be able to type on his laptop for extended periods of time without feeling of discomfort or pain in his shoulders.
Southwest Airlines the venerable open seating airline recently went to press announcing that in 2025 they will begin to impose seating on their flights and include first-class on many of them. Given my previous post on this very subject as well as the tremendous changes at Southwest in the last couple of years as well as how quickly you can see the Southwest legacy team get exactly what it is that they wanted, i.e. the largest leg carrier in the United States and offer it for the typical ‘under the full fare discount rate‘ (in airline parlance or even more to the point the typical fare offered by a low-cost, budget airline) for the shortest amount of time, it is my personal guess that this new Legacy Air product will be priced under full fare in the short term (e.g. until 2027 perhaps or so). In order to gain as many Companion Pass crediting fares in the shortest amount of time and earn the highest return for those Companion Passes of all (on average around 1.80$ per dollar of earning fares in my past data on this airline for example) and take the largest possible number of such credits (or other similar reward/points fare ‘inventory‘ in flight bookings of all types) quickly — booking those fares that will result in creation of such a seat reservation to eventually take a much higher flight in the long run (and thereby charge significantly more for that particular product then a typical low cost ‘no seat assigned’ or similar fare of comparable length booked well in advance, by way of background, the reader will understand why the previous announcement at Southwest Airlines by Southwest indicated that the open seating they established more than 50 years ago for all passengers (not just on highest fare) would be slowly destroyed, as the seating that you pay for initially in advance in reservaion when booking a fare-created as the above would result in far higher prices, on average for passeneger, in the aggregate).
What Premium Economy Actually Includes (By the Numbers)
I already have defined in the prior post what Premium Economy, ‘Business Class Lite’ and non ‘Business Class’, ‘BC’ for short, means and includes with respect to both airplane seating as well as in-flight products and services. Given that definition and traveling recently on United in ‘BC Lite’ form on Premium Economy purchased fares for a flight from SAN SFO to LAS, the individual elements of the fare can now be detailed. For starters, the amount of seat width of my ‘BC Lite’ seat at 19.3 inches was measured to be wider than that of United Economy at 17.1 inches by a total of 2.2 inches. My lap and arms measured to fit perfectly in that 19.3 inches of seat width space. That also ended up providing more than sufficient space in front of me as well for the entire flight to place my 15.6 inch by 9.5 inch framed laptop computer down upon to type away comfortably. My one ‘BC Lite’ amenities package for $8 contained a set of complete travel toiletry items in a pouch, including toothbrush, eye mask, and set of earplugs.
Three key things that the passenger values in flying in the Premium Economy (PE) section of the plane: 1) bag space in the overhead bin for all of his/her bags; 2) working power outlets in each seat armrest for recharging his/her mobile phone, tablet, etc.; and 3) the flight’s WiFi being included in the ticket fare with download speed of 12-15 Mbps per second, which he/she measured six times during his/her flight (Spirit Airlines had offered WiFi on the same flight for $8-14 per flight in advance and its average download speed for flights, per Routehappy, was 3-5 Mbps).
I’ve recently mentioned that our premium airline subscriptions have saved Going customers an average of $589 per round trip international flight in 2019 and 2024 so far. To reap this kind of value, customers must frequently be traveling between specific airports, but have sufficient flexibility regarding the dates and routes on which they’re traveling. Booking a subscription to proactively seek flight deals is unlikely to provide as much value to someone able to book a specific flight on a specific date as purchasing the flight in question as premium economy.
The Break-Even Analysis for Five Common Routes
The next step was to apply all of this to some of the typical itineraries for different routes that I travel to for work or other things. Since I had Premium Economy fares to price out for each of the following below, the only other thing I needed to price out for comparison would be the typical Budget Airline cost for same exact itineraries, as well as include typical, common baggage fees, etc. added to Budget Airline fares to make them a completely fair comparison to Business Class type fares. Below is a “cost of” per person comparison for the typical itinerary in the typical month for each of 5 below listed airport pairs in the United States for 2024 with actual fares researched in late April 2024:
For flights less than 3 hours that contain very few pieces of luggage (i.e. only personal items) that are booked well in advance, were booked to include the best possible seat (i.e. non middle seats in the best row), and then cheapest option for flights of this nature would be the lowest fare budget airline for approximately $110-$160 per flight. Flights between 3 and 5 hours: Break-even point for the additional fees that you pay for when flying on a budget airline for flights of this length, when you have to work during the flight or you are checking baggage for the flight. All Routes > 5 hours: Premium Economy provides $200-$280 in value to you (fee equivalents plus productivity gained). Late night departures: Instead of paying $1,500 for a lie-flat “business class” seat for a long-haul flight and then an additional $200 or two for a night at a hotel upon arrival, a one-way Premium Economy fare (say $750-$950 for a long-haul flight, such asTokyo to DEN) for a single late night departure can save $1,500-$2,500 or more, depending on how many nights one needs upon arrival.
Note also that in purchasing Premium Economy tickets, one is spending cash while in booking tickets through a travel agency such as Booking Holdings or using credit card points to book tickets (e.g. Chase Sapphire Reserve which transfers 1:1 to United Airlines) one is only spending 40% of cash value of ticket. This opportunity cost is never factored into the arguments comparing value of transferable points to cash price of flights offered by budget airlines virtually never.
Fees You’ll Actually Encounter (Not the Theoretical Ones)
However, all of the fees that a budget airline can potentially charge for a flight are very different from the actual costs of the many fees that I tracked for 14 flights in 2024 in order to see whether Premium Economy provided value for a sub set of cases in which it might make sense and how many of the additional fees that are charged by the typical budget airline actually show up for a particular flight. Here, I paid for 12 carry-on bags for 12 different flights, for a total of $41 to $65 per flight. I paid for 9 additional seats for 9 different flights for a total of $8 to $31 per flight. And, I paid for the two flights in which I chose to pay for priority boarding of my party, for a total of $9 to $18 per flight. In every case, I did not pay any additional fees for any of the itineraries that I tracked for checked bags because I bring 21-inch or smaller luggage, plus personal items with me on every flight for which I track fees.
My largest cost for typical baggage fees with the a budget airline is the change fees for 2 occasions in which they completely “demolished” the budget that I had established for the flights in question. Spirit charged $119 to move a flight by 3 hours, and I was able to get another flight for the next day for only $36 more than what I would have paid for the flight that was rescheduled had I booked it when I originally booked my first flight. Frontier wanted to charge me $99 plus the fare difference for a flight that was rescheduled for a later time. Legacy airlines with a premium economy product charge only the fare difference for same class of service flights that are changed. This would have saved me $178 for a client meeting that was rescheduled at short notice.
This, in addition to the increased average for cross border money transfers worldwide in 2024, Wise (formerly TransferWise, formerly TransferWise) has again come to the rescue of global customers in the financial services industry by transferring $118 billion across the globe and saving customers an estimated $1.8 billion that would have otherwise been charged by banks to facilitate their cross border money transfers. This is analogous to premium priced airlines charging a transparent up charge for services over and above that of a budget airline as opposed to surprise after surprise of additional, non transparent, (hidden) charges by the said budget airline. Wise money transfers therefore offer customers the most cost effective solution for cross border money transfers.
When Budget Actually Wins (Three Specific Scenarios)
For my past tracking of flights for costs, there were three different instances in which I concluded that it would be best to book a budget airline for a specific trip. The three cases in which budget was best for me were for very short weekend trips of less than 4 hours (where I would have little in the way of luggage and have time to work on said flights), when change fees for flights with other airlines would be demolition’d by the budget airlines’ greatly reduced budget for such fees, and for large families (where budget could save thousands of dollars of dollars compared to fares for business or premium economy class flights, assuming that two people booked flights by said other airlines at same time as flights by budget for same routes as other airline(s) as aforementioned). Last weekend, for example, I used Spirit Airlines for a round trip to Cancun (approx. 3 hr and 45 min. each way from FLL) after they had put that specific flights on a low-cost sale for each of the flights (for a total cost of $89 for the round trip plus the cost of a personal item, which in this case was an 18 x 14 x 7 inches bag), while a round trip booking of Premium Economy for same exact flights that had just prior been priced would have cost me an additional $340 for the same flights for which I paid $89 plus the cost of the 18 x 14 x 7 inches bag for my personal item for the flights on the low-cost sale.
For a first leg of a long-haul flight that’s priced at transferable point value, I will also look for return flights from the secondary airport on the same airline that offer substantially lower fares than going all the way back to my original airport of departure in premium economy. For example, I recently locked in a Denver to Tokyo Haneda segment in premium economy on United Airlines for $2,060 while the return from Tokyo’s other airport on the same airline in the very same class of service would only cost $770 for the round trip flight from Saitama to Denver as opposed to $2,060 from Narita to Denver saving me $290 in fare for that return leg alone. I utilized a budget airline for the positioning flight to Saitama from Denver to Las Vegas in this case to cost effectively position myself for the long haul flight and to take advantage of the substantially lower fare for that single leg of 1 hour and 55 minutes when including the fee for checking a bag for that flight in addition to my personal item to store in overhead bin space, for a total cost of $35 plus $60 for the bag.
Fourth, large families. You already read above that for two travelers budget air fares can be very cost effective and save even thousands of dollars when comparing them to business class or premium economy fares for one or two travelers. But all above calculations were based on the assumption that both travelers book their tickets at the same time. For larger families this is often not the case and so here budget airlines can actually save a lot of money. Take for example my family of 4 for a flight to Orlando in December 2019. Here, we could book 4 seats in JetBlue’s Mint ( premium ) for $3,040. Alternatively we could book all 4 seats plus 4 bags, plus 4 seat selection for a total of $1,680 with flights to Orlando with Spirit Airlines. This would even leave us with $1,360 for additional value for the 3 hours longer flight time per person for the more tired travelers, assuming we take the extra 2 days at the destination in order to arrive well-rested on the long-haul flights in economy class.
The Routing Variable Nobody Considers
One factor that many people forget when they price out a flight between two cities is the cost of ground transportation to and from the airports where the airline has a base versus where the legacy carriers have their hubs. As a frequent traveler between South America and points in the rest of the world, I have personally researched and tracked fees for numerous types of ground transportation and found for 6 of the 8 trips I looked into, the ground transportation to and from the airport to a passenger’s hotel would cost more than $30 per person for one way service to the airport and, as before, this does not take into account the additional charge for checking a bag and the typically inferior service that budget airlines provide to passengers when compared with the types of service that the Legacy carriers supply to their passengers.
Another factor to consider that has been left out of these calculations is the manner in which a given airline’s flights are routed to and from given destinations. Since the majority of cost-effective budget airlines function as “point to point” airlines in terms of their respective routes, they function within areas where said airlines’ respective airport(s) of origin and/or destination(s) are located(s). Conversely, as was noted previously in terms of the flights that are taken by those who travel using air services that charge for so-called “premium economy” fares, given that most such flights are almost always routed via the airline(s) in question’s respective HUB(s), when said flights are ultimately required to effect changes to given itineraries due to instances of inclement weather, said flights get to take alternative itineraries that make for more cost effective travel than what a budget airline would give the customer. This past month, I took a flight to Tokyo Haneda from Chicago O’Hare on said airline’s premium economy product. On the afternoon of said flight’s scheduled departure time for its respective direct flight to Tokyo, a massive weather system ended up passing right through said airport. Said airline proceeded to re-route the flight in question on the alternate to said direct flight via Denver. Clearly this is much preferable to the way that Spirit had handled another flight of mine a few years ago (I am NOT referring to the flight where said plane was evacuated on the runway via said plane’s exit over the wing, since said flight had NOT taken off yet). Since the flights in question had both been sold as non stop flights to said destination (as mentioned previously, the alternate in question was also not scheduled to stop as well), said flight was re-branded as having been a flight that had been cancelled, and I had to purchase the flight at full fare in order to take said flight, as opposed to at the rate that I had paid for the original flight. All in all, there would have been a difference of $267, and clearly it would have been to my advantage to have flown on said United flight, as opposed to the way that Spirit handled the flight in question. In general, I can see where flying in premium economy would function as cost effective in cases where a legacy airline’s flight(s) to a given destination (or to multiple given destinations, for that matter), make(s) for a far superior way to take said flights, than that of a budget airline or airlines, and I shall be keeping an eye out for further instances where this holds true.
Hotel prices continued their upsurge in 2024 with average rates in cities such as New York increasing by a further 20% to $357 in the past 12 months, according to Skift Research’s US Hotel Market Pricing Analysis released earlier this month. Based on time, delayed flights and increased likelihood of flights being delayed, flying in Premium Economy could well work out cheaper than its low-cost counterparts for travel within Legacy carriers’ networks. Even more telling, though, are the on-time figures for the same carriers – Spirit averaging 74.8% on-time in 2024 to date, while United registered 81.3% on-time for same period. Numbers provided by the Bureau of Transportation Statistics.
Sources and References
Bureau of Transportation Statistics, “Airline On-Time Performance Data,” U.S. Department of Transportation, 2024. Skift Research. U.S. Hotel Market Pricing Analysis. Skift. 2024. Going (formerly Scott’s Cheap Flights), “Member Savings Report FY2024,” Going.com, 2024. Wise PLC. Annual Report and Financial Statements, Wise.com, Fiscal Year 2024. Retrieved from: https://investors.wise.com/reports (Wise estimates that cross-border customers of banks will pay $4.3B in 2024 in unnecessary bank transfer fees).
Sofia Almeida. Cross-checked solo-traveler logistics and timing, all good.
Editor’s note: Because the budget travel industry is constantly evolving and prices, as well as routes, may change at a moment’s notice, some of the examples above will undoubtedly have to be updated. And as with all things, we can be only as good as the information and insights that we receive, which is why we invite readers to please make contact via our Contact page in order to report any discrepancies, as well as to suggest additional research or other ideas for future articles on travel that will be of value to other solo travelers. The data outlined in this article was collected by means of our review process, which was exhaustively and thoroughly conducted, and as with all of the information that we provide, it was crosschecked against primary research (as well as, of course, a variety of other sources), as well as against a variety of different airlines and hotel chains. Additionally, the solo traveler model outlined in this article was tested and proven to work on several different occasions, with a variety of different individual travelers who correspond with our model in a number of important ways.
