Spirit’s Mileage Program Gets Online Award Booking

Spirit Airline’s Free Spirit is the frequent flyer program that frequent flyers love to hate.

Like the airline itself, Free Spirit is notably customer-unfriendly. There are very few earning partners (Choice hotels, Hertz, and the Free Spirit MasterCard). Miles can only be redeemed for Spirit flights. There are fees to redeem miles within 180 days of departure. And miles expire after just three months of inactivity, unless you hold the program-linked MasterCard and make at least one purchase per month.

And until recently, you couldn’t even book award flights on Spirit’s website. That glaring deficiency at least has now been addressed.

Free Spirit members can now book their award flights online rather than paying $25 for the privilege of ringing Spirit’s call center and booking with an agent.

As is the standard industry-wide, the revised Spirit booking app displays both paid and award flights, allowing logged-in program members to toggle back and forth between them and pay for flights with either money or miles.

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This may strike some as a bit like swabbing the decks of a half-sunk ship.

On the other hand, if you’re one of the few who are actually vested in Free Spirit, you deserve no less than an online booking app when it comes time to redeem your hard-earned miles.

Reader Reality Check

Are you a Spirit loyalist? Why?

This article originally appeared on FrequentFlier.com.