DETROIT -- Is 28 inches always 28 inches? Spirit Airlines
emphatically says no. And the carrier’s executives are banking that customers
will agree, as the company continues working to reposition the brand on the
higher end of the ultralow-cost carrier market.
“We are definitely a value play now,” said Lania
Rittenhouse, the carrier’s vice president of in-flight experience.
Spirit took its latest step in that repositioning effort on
Dec. 13, when it launched its first Airbus A320neo outfitted with an enhanced
interior.
That first flight, from Detroit to New Orleans, was a milestone
for the carrier. According to the airline’s plan, planes with the upgraded
interiors will comprise 90 of Spirit’s 193 aircraft by the end of 2021.
In the marketing campaign leading up to the unveiling of its
first retrofitted aircraft, Spirit had made it clear that the planes would be
just as densely packed with seats as those sporting its long-standing
configuration. With a pitch, or space between rows, of 28 inches, Spirit
matches ultralow-cost competitor Frontier for the tightest spacing in the U.S.
airline industry.
But Spirit also said that the new seats had been carefully
designed, both for ergonomic comfort and to create more effective legroom.
The new seats, which were designed for Spirit by U.K.-based
Acro Aircraft Seating over the course of two years of consultations, stand out
for their curved seatbacks. That curvature enables passengers to sit farther
back in the seat than they can in a typical aircraft seat. In addition, Acro
relocated the seatback pocket to the top of the seat, opening up additional
space for the knees.
On Dec. 17, four days after Spirit began flying that first
retrofitted aircraft, I had a chance to sample it as part of a media unveiling
held at the carrier’s hangar facility here. Spirit also had a second plane
parked close by, this one sporting the same interior as the one I had flown
from Denver to Detroit the night before.
I sat in the new seats for maybe 10 minutes, then boarded
the other plane and sat in one of the older seats. My conclusion? There’s no
arguing that the new seats afford more legroom, even though they still have
just 28 inches of pitch. Spirit said the new design has led to an increase of 2
inches in “usable legroom.” I can’t be sure how precise that metric is. But the
extra space is significant, and it will be especially helpful for the carrier’s
taller passengers.
Along with readjusting leg space in the new interior, Spirit
has also made the aisle slightly narrower, and it has taken that borrowed space
to add an inch of width to the middle seats. The new middle seats will be 18
inches wide while the aisle and window seats will have the same 17 inches of
width as older Spirit interiors, said Acro key account manager Marc Westcott,
who helped in the seats’ design.
The carrier’s other major boast about the new seats is that
they feature a thicker cushion and are ergonomically designed for added
comfort. Westcott said Acro redesigned the curvature of the seats to match
people’s natural posture. As for the cushioning, he said that Spirit’s seats
have traditionally been built with one cushion. And while that cushion is
designed both for comfort and durability, it is durability that tends to win
the day.
The new seats, though, have three cushions. On the
retrofitted aircraft, Westcott pulled a seat bottom off its apparatus and
demonstrated that the top cushion is soft for comfort while the bottom cushion
is hard for durability.
I wasn’t in the seats long enough to definitively say how
much more comfort they’ll provide over the length of a flight, but the
demonstration was compelling. That top cushion was much softer than the bottom
one.
Improvements aside, over the course of my morning at the
Spirit hangar, one thing that struck me was how much effort the airline is
putting into making use of every inch of aircraft real estate. It makes sense,
of course. Spirit aircraft fly roughly five trips per day nearly every day.
With the carrier’s total revenue per passenger flight segment having averaged
$111 this year through September, a single row of seats can be expected to
bring in more than $550,000 over the course of a year.
Still, I felt I had to ask the obvious question: If Spirit
really wants to enhance comfort and reposition its brand, why not take out a
few seats?
“Our guests care about the price they pay to get from point
A to point B, and I think what we’re trying to do is the best of both worlds,”
manager of media relations Erik Hofmeyer said. “We know that we deliver that
value by flying more people in the same plane. So we realize that we have to
use the space that we have the best that we can, and that is why we designed
this seat.”