Spirit Credit Card Application Failure
What is that saying about making plans? If you want to see God laugh make some plans, or something like that. Well, it looks like God may be spitting out a drink right about now. Heck, you might be laughing that I signed up for a Spirit Airlines credit card at all, but we’ll get to that in a minute. This Spirit credit card application failure may just end up being a $79 lesson for me. To be fair, that isn’t too bad of a haircut. We live and learn after all, right?
Why I Decided To Sign Up For A Spirit Airlines Credit Card
Get ready to clutch some pearls, yes – I fly Spirit Airlines a few times a year. They have pretty good routing out of Detroit, and I am willing to take shorter non-stop flights with them. That usually involves me going to the airport to buy my tickets, but not this time around.
I need a positioning flight to NYC for our upcoming Spring break trip. Usually finding a flight into the NYC area is not an issue. Most times I am able to find a decent award on United into Newark, Delta into JFK or LGA, or American into LGA. I have never struggled to find an award on one of those airlines for under 10K miles one way. That is until now.
I guess they think the NYC area is a hotbed travel destination for Spring break or something. The cheapest flight was on Delta for 22K per person. For reference, that is more than I paid to fly to Bermuda and all the way back home in total (20.5K per person).
That is when I decided to kick the tires on Spirit Airlines. I never paid their program much attention because of their terrible mileage expiration policy. In the past I used their miles for magazine subscriptions. No joke, and yes magazine subscriptions are still a thing – sort of. To my surprise though, Spirit had multiple flights at 10,000 per person!
Why I Decided Not To Transfer Miles From Bilt
This was shortly after Bilt Rewards joined up with Spirit Airlines to be Spirit’s first transfer partner. Now I could just move 40K Bilt points over and book the flights. In hindsight, maybe I should have done just that.
I didn’t want to though, because I value Bilt Rewards at more than what Spirit was offering. Maybe the bigger reason is because Spirit Airlines is in a lot of turmoil right now. They are fighting bankruptcy, cancelling flights quite often and I didn’t want to move Bilt points over to have them stranded there. What if Spirit cancels our flight? Then I have 40K in points sitting there in an airline that could close up shop at any point (that was the fear at the time). Not ideal.
I decided to grab a Spirit Airlines credit card instead. Getting 50,000 miles after $1,000 in spend would be perfect. The cost would only be the $79 annual fee too. I was a bit worried about the award price changing before I earned the miles, but there were 4 flight times at 10K per person that would work. I foolishly figured that one of them would stay available at that price for a month.
Bilt Did Play A Role In Application Decision Though
Bilt adding Spirit Airlines as a transfer partner did play a role in my decision though. Knowing that I wouldn’t potentially be leaving 10,000 miles stranded there after our bookings, because I could top it off for a flight with Bilt Rewards, made the decision even easier. Throw in the fact that my miles won’t expire as long as I am a cardholder and it gave me a little bit of piece of mind. Well, as long as Spirit didn’t go completely belly up at least.
The Best Laid Plans Turned Into Dust
I hit the spending fairly quickly on the card. Even though I had hoped it would be one where the miles post shortly after completing the spend, I knew I would likely have to wait for the first statement to cut. That was a long month of waiting. During the mean time I checked other options to NYC in case they dropped at all. They did not. I would also check the Spirit pricing every couple of weeks to see if it was still showing 10K flights. It was.
It was, until it wasn’t. When the miles finally hit my account I rushed over to Spirit Airlines to lock in our flights. I had still planned on booking a later in the day Delta flight in case Spirit decided to go all Spirit on us the day of the flight. I figured I could cancel the Delta flight once we took off with Spirit. Well, that is when God started rolling with a belly laugh. The flights had jumped to 20,000+ per person, all except the last flight of the day. I am ballsy, but I am not that ballsy. Plus, it would get in way too late and would have us dragging the next morning for the main part of the trip. All that to say that my backup flight has become my front runner.
Spirit Credit Card Application Failure
Sometimes our best laid plans turn into utter failure. That is why we need to give ourselves options by stock piling different airline miles, hotel points and most notably – transferrable currencies. That is especially true when trying to thread a needle with your plan, as I was here. At the end of the day I will likely end up being out $79 and $1000 worth of spend. I have taken much worse losses.
I’ll continue to check for better options up until departure. Hey, some last minute magic would be appreciated over here. If that doesn’t happen with Spirit, or another airline, then I’ll use my newly minted stash of Spirit miles to fly my parents up for a visit. Son of the year award over here , right?!
