Weekend plans were ruined for several hundred Spirit Airlines customers after their flight was delayed and eventually canceled.
Some Spirit Airlines passengers who were supposed to fly out of Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport on a flight late Friday afternoon said the airline left them in the dark about their fight, which was delayed and eventually canceled, leaving several hundred passengers stranded overnight.
Hannah Palmer and her husband were trying to fly Spirit Airlines from Baltimore to New Orleans for her cousin’s wedding. The flight was supposed to leave at 5:20 p.m., but that’s when delays started.
“They said it is delayed. ‘We don’t know when it’s going to get here,’ kind of thing, so then I got an email saying it was delayed until 9:30. Obviously, I wanted to know what was going on because there is still nobody at the desk,” Palmer said.
Palmer said Spirit staff members seemed confused and unorganized, so she decided to record video of the situation on her cellphone.
“The copilot and the pilot showed up not even knowing the flight was delayed. No one even told them, which is ridiculous,” Palmer said.
By 10 p.m., the travelers finally received word that the flight was canceled, even though passengers claimed that a manager told them they would fly out Friday night. While Spirit said they would refund passengers, it was close to midnight and they would not be providing accommodations.
“We all stood around saying, ‘Three-hundred people are stranded in Baltimore and no hotel accommodations? You’re not going to do anything?’ They did nothing,” Palmer said. “We celebrated birthdays in the airport because people were trying to go to New Orleans to celebrate their birthdays. People that live there couldn’t get home.”
Douglas Kidd, executive director of the National Association of Airline Passengers, told 11 News that, unfortunately, in this case, the airlines have all the control.
“My feeling is if the flight’s going to be delayed more than three hours, you may as well look for another flight,” Kidd said.
“All the airline fees, all the hotel fees, everything we lost — they won’t get back to us. It’s ridiculous,” Palmer said.
According to Spirit’s contract of carriage, “Times shown in a timetable or elsewhere are not guaranteed and form no part of the terms of transportation. Spirit will not assume expenses incurred as a result of a flight delay, cancellation or schedule change.”
WBAL-TV 11 News contacted Spirit Airlines to request a comment, but no one has called back.
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