Spirit Airlines has just increased the cost to purchase tickets online, by an average of $5 per segment, as flagged by JT Genter. Now, this is unlikely to actually impact the final price you pay for your ticket, but it’s an interesting development nonetheless.
In this post:
Spirit hikes Passenger Usage Charge by $5
As of May 21, 2025, Spirit has increased its “Passenger Usage Charge.” Previously, it was anywhere from $3.99 to $22.99 per segment, while now it’s anywhere from $8.99 to $27.99 per segment. As you can tell, that represents an average increase of $5 per segment.
What is a Passenger Usage Charge, you ask? Good question. As the airline describes it, “this applies to bookings created online, at international airports or via reservations centers.” In other words, if you book a ticket anywhere other than at the ticket counter at a domestic airport, you’ll pay this fee for each segment you book.
For example, let’s take a look at a Tampa to Houston to Los Angeles ticket, with a total fare of $112.38. If you look at the breakdown, the base fare is $29.21, while the Passenger Usage Charge is $55.98, so that comes out to $27.99 per segment.
Most airlines don’t have these Passenger Usage Charges, so what are the practical implications of the Passenger Usage Charge increasing?
- Ultimately the fares Spirit can charge are based on the competitive landscape, and the airline has to market all-in fares; so you can expect that when the Passenger Usage Charge increases by $5, the base fare decreases by $5
- The one potential benefit is that if you’re willing to book your Spirit ticket at the airport (which few people are willing to do), you can save an extra $5 per ticket, since you’re not on the hook for those fees
Why Spirit is increasing the Passenger Usage Charge
Logically, you might be thinking “huh?” Why would Spirit increase the Passenger Usage Charge if it can’t actually increase fares? Well, that gets at the very reason these kinds of fees exist, which is to decrease the portion of an airline ticket cost that’s taxable. After all, consumers only care about the final price they pay, and not how much the airline gets to keep vs. how much the government gets.
Airline tickets in the United States are subject to a federal excise tax of 7.5%. The important thing to understand is that this excise tax is exclusively charged on the base fare of the ticket, and the same tax doesn’t apply to any optional add-ons.
Whether something is categorized as an optional add-on depends on whether the fee can be avoided. Since you can avoid the Passenger Usage Charge by booking at domestic airports, it’s technically an optional fee.
So by increasing the Passenger Usage Charge by $5 per segment, it essentially means that the airline can keep an extra 38 cents per passenger per segment. If we’re talking about a full flight with 150 seats, that’s an extra $56 in revenue! Of course that assumes that nobody chooses to book at the airport. I’m not sure this will fully plug the gap of Spirit’s negative 22.5% operating margin in 2024, but I guess every little bit helps. 😉
If you ask me (and many others), it’s time for some reform for the federal excise tax on airfare, because it doesn’t make sense to essentially incentivize airlines to create as many fees as possible, in order to minimize the taxes that are paid.
Bottom line
Spirit Airlines has increased its Passenger Usage Charge on airline tickets by an average of $5 per segment. This applies for all bookings, except those made at counters at domestic airports. No, this doesn’t mean Spirit is raising the cost of tickets. Instead, you can expect the airline will decrease the base airfare by $5 per segment to coincide with this.
The logic is that the airline doesn’t have to pay the 7.5% federal excise tax on the part of the fare that’s the Passenger Usage Charge, so the airline will net an extra 38 cents per passenger per segment, assuming no one books at the airport.
What do you make of this move on Spirit’s part?
In simple terms: this is a tax cheat. I don’t see why the government doesn’t ho after this tax fraud.
A lot of people actually do buy tickets at the Spirit ticket counter. In some airports, Spirit has a dedicated counter for it (FLL, MCO, LAS, ACY). In Atlantic City, so many people come to buy tickets, the airport ended it's first 30 minutes of free parking so it could make some money off of it. Spirit is not nearly as restrictive with the hours as other carriers who charge exactly the same sort of...
A lot of people actually do buy tickets at the Spirit ticket counter. In some airports, Spirit has a dedicated counter for it (FLL, MCO, LAS, ACY). In Atlantic City, so many people come to buy tickets, the airport ended it's first 30 minutes of free parking so it could make some money off of it. Spirit is not nearly as restrictive with the hours as other carriers who charge exactly the same sort of fee.... Frontier nebulously says "after check in closes for an active flight" or something to that effect. Allegiant has a 1 hour window once or twice a week outside of flight times. Breeze only does it for 1-2 hours on Tuesdays (when all an agent does is put a QR code up on the counter for you to scan and fill out a form for a remote res agent to do the booking).
I buy Spirit tickets with some frequency at the airport. As I'm coming off other airlines even at night, as NK has a 10pm departure, I stop by the counter where I seldom wait in line. It takes only a couple of minutes. As they do it so often, the agents are pretty quick about it (and I can attest... in NK's system if you know what you're doing, you can do a ticket in about 3 minutes from flight search to handing over a receipt.... before they turned off the green screen I could do it in 75 seconds).
Spirit has "recommended hours" for buying tickets when it may be less busy, and may ask someone to write out what they want (they won't entertain you tying up an agent for an hour shopping like "what is it on this day? how much is it on this day? what about this other city? on this day?" - they'll usually say go to the website on your phone if you don't have a flight in mind, and subtract $X off the fare if you want to shop) and come back when the line is a little shorter in a half hour, or may dedicate just one agent to selling tickets, but not like Frontier who will say they don't have time or staffing. Some stations will send you to the baggage service office to do your bookings.
I don't know what exact percentage of sales through this channel but it is not insignificant, and Spirit is better equipped than most to handle it. It's satisfying to walk away having paid $13.80 for a one-way ticket (and that's the PFC and 9/11 charge making up about $9 of it).
"As of May 21, 2025, Spirit has increased its “Passenger Usage Charge.” Previously, it was anywhere from $3.99 to $22.99 per segment, while now it’s anywhere from $8.99 to $27.99 per segment. As you can tell, that represents an average increase of $5 per segment."
That the minimum and maximum bounds increased by $5 doesn't tell us that the average increase is $5. If every single PUC goes up by $5, then yes, the average...
"As of May 21, 2025, Spirit has increased its “Passenger Usage Charge.” Previously, it was anywhere from $3.99 to $22.99 per segment, while now it’s anywhere from $8.99 to $27.99 per segment. As you can tell, that represents an average increase of $5 per segment."
That the minimum and maximum bounds increased by $5 doesn't tell us that the average increase is $5. If every single PUC goes up by $5, then yes, the average is $5, but it's possible to have a distribution where the maximum and minimum went up by $5 but the average increase is, say, $10 or $3.
For example, what if PUCs that were $11.99 before are now $21.99 while PUCs that were $22.99 are now $27.99? Unless the PUC always increased by $5 across the board, someone would need to pull the data before and after the change to see if the average is $5. We only know the change to the absolute bounds.
"Now, this is unlikely to actually impact the final price you pay for your ticket, but it’s an interesting development nonetheless."
Because spirit airfares are so low, they often used to have base flights of just a penny each and everything else would be fees and taxes. I'd argue it really does bake in a $5 additional charge to the price, on the low end. I used to purchase a bunch of spirit "penny"...
"Now, this is unlikely to actually impact the final price you pay for your ticket, but it’s an interesting development nonetheless."
Because spirit airfares are so low, they often used to have base flights of just a penny each and everything else would be fees and taxes. I'd argue it really does bake in a $5 additional charge to the price, on the low end. I used to purchase a bunch of spirit "penny" flights at the counter for very cheap so it just increases the incentive to book at the airport. If anything I guess it increases the minimum price for a ticket. If tickets are regularly priced above a penny (or above $5 base fare) ok yes probably a wash for the reasons you mention.