Allegiant Airlines?

[Bowen9475]

Looking to book a weekend trip for my husband and me. Considering Allegiant. Please share your experiences and any information about the airline. Almost always fly Southwest. Thank you!

 

[EACarlson]

Make sure you look at your final cost when comparing to other airlines. Allegiant charges for carryon bags and it's an insane amount when you don't pay in advance. Understand that if your flight gets cancelled you are probably not going to have a weekend trip. They usually only fly places once a day if that. They can be a great value or they can be a huge frustration, as long as your expectations are tempered you should be fine.

 

[Stratman50th]

I don't fly any longer but my wife uses Allegiant all the time. She flies out of Sanford which she likes because it's small with easy parking and less traffic. She goes into Hagerstown, MD which is another small airport. She loves it for price and convenience. She has not experienced any of the issues described above, but her last flight was before the Rona so obviously things could have changed.

 

[tzvdmd]

I have never had any issues with Allegiant flying from Sanford to Pittsburgh and back.

 

[Darcy03231]

I've never flown Allegiant, but a co-worker who has a condo in Florida uses them frequently. For her it's not an issue if the flight is canceled because she has a home/clothes/car in both locations. If you have the ability to be flexible and don't "need" to fly in/out in case your flight gets cancelled, I would try them. Just keep in mind that if something happens it can take days to get you on another flight.

 

[chicagodisneyguy]

Allegiant is great until it's not. If the flight is on-time it will be a similar experience to basically all the other major airlines. Where airlines like Allegiant/Spirit/Frontier struggle is if the flight gets cancelled. They don't have multiple flights a day to places...so if your Friday night flight gets cancelled...the next flight with available seats might be several days out....which for a 3 day weekend basically means the trip is cancelled.

All airlines are dealing with staffing issues and full flights. So a cancelled friday night flight on SW or AA or any of the other airlines could lead to a longer than normal delay getting you to your destination. That said, I'd still bet SW, AA, UA, or DL would get you there faster.

 

[Mrs.AMC]

I wouldn't touch them.
Unless you are happy to have your trip go heywire.
Sure it may not
But if it does, are you prepared for all phases to go bad?
I know that cancellations are where it's the worse the reason being there aren't daily flights.
If you can't get the flight today, you can't just get on one in the morning. There won't be a flight in the morning. Or probably even the next evening. Maybe even not the following morning. Here, the flights are only 2, 3 days a week. Which means 1 missed flight means 2, 3 days more missed work or can even mean a totally missed vacation if it when you are leaving on vacation.
No amount of cost savings is worth that.

 

[Mrs.AMC]

Make sure you look at your final cost when comparing to other airlines. Allegiant charges for carryon bags and it's an insane amount when you don't pay in advance. Understand that if your flight gets cancelled you are probably not going to have a weekend trip. They usually only fly places once a day if that. They can be a great value or they can be a huge frustration, as long as your expectations are tempered you should be fine.

Allegiant charges for every little thing, outside of a purse. Heck, I've often said I'm surprised they don't have coin operated toilets! For those that remember them in bus stations back in the 70's (showing my age here)

By the time you pay for each little piece with Allegiant, plus added transfer to/from Sanford, it's often not cheaper.

 

[Best Aunt]

By the time you pay for each little piece with Allegiant, plus added transfer to/from Sanford, it's often not cheaper.

PPs have covered most of the issues (you get "nickel and dimed" for everything, so you can't glance at the price and think you are getting a great deal because there will be many additional costs, and there might only be a few flights a week out of your airport).

But maybe this wasn't stressed enough.

Allegiant flies into Sanford airport, not Orlando International Airport (MCO). Some people like Sanford because it's not as busy and hectic as MCO. But it is considerably further from Disney World than MCO. If you google it:
Orlando Airport (MCO) is 16.6 - 21.2 miles away from Walt Disney World Resort depending on your route.
Sanford Airport is about 40 - 50 miles from Walt Disney World.

If you're going to rent a car anyway, then maybe you don't care. But if you are use other transportation, you have to factor in the added cost when you are pricing out your trip.

As an example:
Tiffany Towncar round trip between MCO and a Disney hotel: $165
Tiffany Towncar round trip between Sanford and a Disney hotel: $260

If you plan to use Uber or Lyft, getting to your hotel from Sanford could cost twice what it would to get there from MCO.

 

[PAsFab5]

I agree with all the concerns others have listed.

However, we fly with them all the time. We had one issue in 5 years with frontier cancelling a flight. We rescheduled the trip, but it was just a trip to get out of the cold, not a once in a lifetime trip or anything like that.

At the end of the day, our family could not afford to travel like we do if we didn’t fly frontier/allegiant out of our small local airport.

We share one checked bag between the 3 of us. My daughter and I have travel backpacks and using packing cubes. They hold a week worth of clothes. My husband packs a regular backpack. These are all “personal items” that don’t cost extra.

We put bulky items, liquids and souvenirs in the one checked bag.

We just take the seats assigned at check in we don’t buy seats. We have always sat together.

We have family who would NEVER travel the way we do, with minimal luggage and not pre assigned seats…but they don’t get to travel as much as we do because of that.

It all depends on what is important to you but for what it’s worth I love allegiant!

 

[k5xs]

Depends on your risk tolerance. As someone else said, it's fine flying them until they run into an abnormal situation. A cancelled flight can leave you stranded for several days.

These customer service rankings happen for a reason:

https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/a...ice/?msclkid=ea8b852bc5a211ec9e9ba1ad73d87f51

 

[Anna131517]

We flew them last time but I wouldn’t use them again for a planned trip. Our first flight got cancelled a week before our flight so we had to change our vacation dates to get another flight with them. It was so last minute that all the other airlines were 2-3 times as much, but would have been comparable when we originally booked. Then we were lucky to get home after a three hour delay because the plane we used to go home first had to come from somewhere else that had bad weather. So basically they’re so lean that if anything goes wrong your flight may be cancelled and they may refund your money but they won’t help rebook you with anyone else, unlike the major airlines.

 

[xipotec]

Looking to book a weekend trip for my husband and me. Considering Allegiant. Please share your experiences and any information about the airline. Almost always fly Southwest. Thank you!

IF you can afford to be late, have you flight cancelled and have alternative airlines in your main airport, then it might be ok.

If you NEED to be where your going, and cannot afford delays, then your not saving anything, you’re just increasing your aggrivation.

They have been known to have staffing issues later in the day, so later flights have constant problems. SW has not been much better lately.

 

[jkelly86]

Depends on your risk tolerance. As someone else said, it's fine flying them until they run into an abnormal situation. A cancelled flight can leave you stranded for several days.

These customer service rankings happen for a reason:

https://upgradedpoints.com/travel/a...ice/?msclkid=ea8b852bc5a211ec9e9ba1ad73d87f51

I was surprised to see JetBlue ranked below Allegiant!

 

[Mrs.AMC]

I was surprised to see JetBlue ranked below Allegiant!

I've never used them but have only heard positive things from people who do use them so yeah, it is a huge surprise.