Conrad’s Capers—Basic Strategy for Ultra-Low-Cost Airline Tickets, Part 3

In Part 1 of Conrad Stanley’s personal guide to flying the ultra-low-cost carriers, he introduced his five-part strategy for buying the cheapest possible airline tickets. In Part 2, he delved more deeply into the details of first two strategies. In Part 3, we continue the series, discussing seat selection and carry-on luggage.

Basic strategy rule number three: Never pay for a seat in advance. The airline assigns you a seat for free when you check in. Of course, you take pot luck as to the seat you sit in and you can get stuck anywhere — for example, the middle seat in the very last row of the plane.

“Spirit used to have a policy where if you were assigned a middle seat, you could ask at the gate and they moved you to an open aisle or window no charge,” Conrad recalls wistfully. “Alas, they no longer do that.

“But I’ve found that a lot people travel in pairs. So they’re sitting together either on the aisle and middle or window and middle. That means either the aisle or window in a given row is open.”

Here, too, through experience Conrad has found a little trick to maximize aisle-window assignments.

“I’ve found that checking in at the earliest possible time, 24 hours in advance, you’re more likely to get assigned a middle seat in a row with two single travelers who’ve paid for the aisle or window. Instead, I check in around 12 hours in advance and more often than not, I wind up in a row with two people traveling together, so I get the aisle or window for free.

“Of course, this is far from scientific. Empirically, though, I enjoy aisle and window seats as much as, if not more than, I suffer in the middle.”

Finally, we come to the necessity of packing light.

Both Spirit and Frontier charge not only for checked bags, but also carry-ons. In fact, they charge more for carry-on bags than checked bags — as a way to encourage you to check your luggage, which greatly speeds up the boarding process.

The allowable maximum size for a carry-on is 22×18×10, or 50 linear inches, and must fit into a bin at the gate. If it doesn’t fit in the bin, it must be checked. Even if it does fit, you have to pay.

However, you can bring one “personal item” for free. On Spirit and Frontier, the size of that carry-on is limited to 18×14×8 or 40 linear inches. Allegiant’s personal item is just two linear inches smaller at 16×15×7.

“People think the personal item is limited to a small backpack or purse,” Conrad explains, “but that’s not so. The personal item is 80 percent the capacity of the carry-on that you would have to pay for. Pack just a little lighter or smarter and you should be able to roll gratis with a personal-size bag. I’ve found qualifying bags online, customized to those max dimensions, and own a couple of them.”

This first photo is one of Conrad’s personal bags, sitting atop Frontier’s blue bin in which the carry-on must fit, in order not to be checked, but that is still charged extra. “Remember,” Conrad reminds, “it’s 80 percent as big as a regular carry-on.”

“And it fits like a glove!” Conrad says about the bag inside Frontier’s green free-personal-item bin.

In our final installment of this series, Conrad discusses tricks for getting more stuff onboard at no charge and ultra-low-cost carriers’ ultra-high cost food.