If Spirit oversold seats on the plane you were planning to board and you’re not choosing to switch to a standby flight just for added convenience, Spirit staff will book another flight for you at no charge.
Seats are sold on a first-come, first-serve basis. If you’re the first to show up in the morning, you’ll have a lot of standby choices. Even if one plane fills up, there might be a lot more than can take you. Your standby selection diminishes the more you postpone coming to the airport. [4] X Research source
If customer service is struggling to find a standby flight, that’s normal. People can make a lot of last-minute changes to their plans. What ends up happening is that lots of seats can fill or free up. Space on a plane can really range in a matter of hours or even minutes.
Spirit Airlines does not have an official policy for providing standby flights later in the day.
Either you want to pay a fee on top of the base amount of your ticket for the convenience to get a head start leaving, or Spirit lets you board an alternate plane if the one you already paid for is full.
Spirit Airlines doesn’t have a standby list you can sign up for. Some airlines let you opt to be put on a standby list just in case seats free up on another plane. With Spirit, you have to actually pay for a seat on a standby flight in advance and lock it in as yours. If you want to change the actual date of a flight or cancel it, Spirit Airlines has a different pricing model.
Spirit Airlines doesn’t have an official system for “seat bumping. ” Seat bumping is when you can get a better seat on another plane if your flight was oversold. Some airlines give you an upgraded seat as a courtesy for this inconvenience, but Spirit doesn’t guarantee that.
If Spirit doesn’t refund you because you didn’t make the time window to board, there’s still a chance other standby flights have space for you. This is more down to chance, though, so it’s best not to try your luck missing your plane!
