Allegiant Air :Talk me down from this ledge...

[Maistre Gracey]

My husband is a pilot and said he would NEVER fly with them because of the safety and maintenance issues they have....

I respect that, but truly hard to know from the outside looking in.
Don't take everything you here on the News as a major maintenance flaw.

MG

 

[Kenny1113]

I have flown allegiant several times -yes with delays and more recently our flight was cancelled 30 min before boarding!!! And as pp said -no back up, no other flight to put us on until 2 days later.

I have a flight I booked with them before hearing all of this.
I will not fly with them again until I hear of a major overhaul of their practices.

 

[DopeyDame]

An article in the Wall St. Journal covered this. They fired a pilot for returning to the airport after smoke began filling the plane. I'd never fly them.

After I read that article I actually just ate the money I'd spent on an allegiant flight and bought another ticket on American. Obviously I didn't get my money back from Allegiant, but that (and similar articles I googled) was just too much for me.
Yes, of course all airlines have emergency landings. But the rest generally take maintenance and safety really seriously and would never reprimand a pilot for doing what he thought he had to do for the safety of his passengers (I mean, assuming it wasn't something totally inappropriate, of course)

I also really don't like that it's the same CEO as ValueJet. There's a reason they went out of business and it sounds like he's running allegiant the same way he ran ValueJet.

 

[Mem11]

I also really don't like that it's the same CEO as ValueJet. There's a reason they went out of business and it sounds like he's running allegiant the same way he ran ValueJet.

That's a good reason not to trust them, but ValueJet didn't go out of business, they just bought out/merged with the much smaller AirTran Airways and changed their name. That's a misconception many have.

I was forced to fly ValueJet by my company about a month before the crash in May of 1996. Possibly the worst flight I ever had. The plane was old, dirty and made sounds I'd never heard coming from an airliner before. The landing on the way down was a little scary. We touched down on the right side and it seemed it took forever to get the left side down. The flight back wasn't much better and I vowed never to fly them again, nor would I fly AirTran, knowing they were just ValueJet with a different name and I will Never fly Allegiant as I believe they are using the same business model that was used at ValueJet(Skimp on everything, maximize profit). Fortunately for ATA, new management came in shortly after the buyout/merger, but I still wasn't going to chance it.

 

[KrazeeK120]

I've flown on Allegiant 3 times - twice to Orlando and once to Vegas. It's significantly less expensive for me than any other option. The only problem we've ever had was on return from Vegas - there was a maintenance issue with one of the lavatories, of all things. They couldn't get it fixed, and since there were 2 other functional lavatories on the plane, we left without fixing the problem. I really didn't have an issue with that. As luck would have it, they were reconfiguring runways when we finally left to take off, causing further delay. I think we ended up leaving 1 hr 45 min late. All in all, I haven't had issues with them.

The closest direct flight to MCO would be 2.5 hours away, at either Midway or O'Hare and I'm not such a fan of traffic around those areas (especially O'Hare). If I didn't fly Allegiant, I'd probably connect in Atlanta on Delta. I've done that before too...it can be a headache.

These days, we get in the car and drive the 16 hours to Disney. It's just much less stressful to me than flying. Longer, yes, but my blood pressure doesn't go up nearly as much!

 

[serenitynow]

Our local airport offers Allegiant flights 2 days a week to Florida, Monday and Thursday. My friend had a flight on Thursday, sat in the airport for 7 hours, after being told the flight in was being delayed due to "weather", then finally the flight had to be canceled as the plane never arrived, due to a maintenance issue. The announcement was made that "We will try again on Monday, folks". On Monday the flight was only delayed by 6 hours, but at least she got there, I guess. Allegiant's attitude about the whole thing was like they were doing her a favor by even allowing her the chance to fly on one of their crappy old planes. Oh well, better luck next time passengers. After all the delays, car rentals, airport meals, and additional hotel room charges for late cancellation, it cost her the same as a real airline would have, plus a real airline would have at least given her a free drink and some pretzels! Plus she spent a day of her vacation time from work sitting in the airport waiting for a plane that never came.

 

[klmall]

Never flown it but it's definitely a NO for me; any airline but Allegiant.

Their fares are by far the cheapest from our area and the only one who flies a direct flight from there to Orlando but we fly United, Delta or American even if we have to drive an hour to Denver or take connecting flights as we will this spring.

 

[keishashadow]

DH brought to my attention some info just released about Allegiant Air and how it is 4 times more likely to make unexpected landings due to issues. We fly Allegiant all the time. I've never experienced any issues but I dont know what this new info should mean to me (if anything). Should I worry about this stuff?

4 X, hadn't heard that

We flew on the first Allegiant flight from PIT to SFB last November. Plane looked new-ish, we sat @ the gate for close to an hour. Has never happened to me out of PIT, never told 'why' but wasn't weather related.

We left Sanford a good 45 min late too.

DH & I flew them again in Feb/March. Twenty minute delay out of PIT, coming home another issue. A bathroom was out of service. We sat on the plane for almost 2 hours before we departed, but happy to leave as another flight not scheduled for a few days. Therein is my issue, if you really 'have' to be somewhere, it's nerve-wracking to fly them as there are no alternatives as with SWA.

They seem to be more professional than Spirit out of LBE in our area, and I have noticed they have lowered their fares to MCO probably due to the competition. Now & again, we snag a great fare on SWA too since, along with Allegiant, Frontier has joined the market. Nice to have options again in our area to MCO.

 

[anonymousegirl]

The maintenance issues seem bad, but the real reason why I won't fly Allegiant is the lack of planes to replace canceled flights. To have to wait 3-4 days for the next flight, which is probably overbooked already is a no-go for me

 

[BigAlsGal]

Like I said I must get really lucky. Have flown with them many many times and only 1 minor setback.

 

[Fairyjen1]

A few years ago I had a friend fly Allegiant to visit me. On his flight back I took him to the airport in Stockton, CA. He was flying to Vegas where he lives. It was foggy that night, so they delayed the flight. Understandable, they can't control the fog. Eventually they delayed the flight until the next morning. They got a good price on a hotel...several miles from the airport (The Stockton airport is in the middle of no where), and they weren't offering any type of transportation to said hotel, and the airport closes at 10pm so they kicked everyone out. They eventually announced the flight would head out the next day at 10am. I picked up my friend and he stayed an extra night at my house.


The next day we go back for his 10 o'clock flight, which got delayed to noon, then 2pm, then 4pm. Finally they said the flight was delayed indefinitely. They wouldn't refund your money because the flight wasn't cancelled just 'delayed indefinitely' if you raised a stink they would offer you a voucher for a future flight. I ended up driving my friend to the Sacramento airport (about 45 minutes from Stockton) and he got a flight on Southwest. He took the voucher but said he probably wouldn't use it because he was never flying Allegiant again.


I know they can't control the fog, and that wasn't really the problem. It was how they handled it. There was one young mother there with two young kids. She had a connection in Vegas for 3pm to her home destination. Apparently there is only one flight to her home airport from Vegas a week. I was lending her a hand with her kids (I didn't know her, she just looked like she needed some help) and the ticket agent told her she was going to miss it, but they could get her on the next plane out of Vegas to her final destination....a week later!! She asked where she was supposed to stay in Vegas for a week with two small kids and they said that it wasn’t their problem. She had been out to Stockton to visit family so I think she eventually called them to come get her and I don’t know what she ultimately did.


As far as I know that flight was never cancelled and could still be ‘delayed indefinitely’. I don’t think I’ll be flying Allegiant any time soon. I’d rather pay a few bucks more and get to my destination.

 

[AngiTN]

The schedule is just a huge issue. For most airlines, a cancelled flight, for whatever reason, isn't a huge issue as they have multiple flights, daily. Allegiant doesn't. They often have a few flights one day a week in and out of a few airports (like ours). So you have anything that causes you to miss a flight you are royally screwed as they can't just put you on a flight the next day, there isn't one. Couple that with a higher than avg number of delays and cancellations and it takes a real gambler to fly them. Even without questionable mechanical practices. I'm actually surprised they still have customers. I'd imagine they have screwed over so many who tried them for 1 flight they don't get many repeat customers. Eventually they are going to run out of folks willing to give them a chance. I guess that just shows they'll never get a bigger customer base, and more income and improve