Understanding the Spirit $9 Fare Club
Is the Spirit $9 Fare Club Right for You?
One question I get asked a lot is if it’s beneficial or not for someone to join the $9 fare club. The honest answer to that is “it depends”.
What are your travel plans?
There are certain questions I like to ask, how often do you plan on flying Spirit in the next 365 days? Do you think you’ll bring a bag or a carry-on each time? How many people are you flying with? Do you see a $9 fare for a flight on a day/time you want to go? Is buying tickets at the airport not a convenient option for you?
How much cheaper are these tickets?
When I see $9 fare club prices, they are usually $10, $15 or $20 cheaper, each way, than the normal ticket price. That’s close to the same savings you would get buying your tickets at the airport. Sometimes you might see a $9 fare price on your flight out, but not the return. Or vice versa. They’re not always available; but I suggest watching the flights for a while to see if it would benefit you.
How many people can get the $9 fares?
You can wait and buy the membership the day you want to buy the tickets you see. You can get the $9 fares for other people in your party. The Spirit website states: “Enjoy the same savings for everyone on your travel itinerary. Benefits apply to you and up to 8 additional passengers on your itinerary.
Passengers must be reserved on the same booking confirmation number as the Spirit $9 fare club member in order to receive fare and/or bag savings.†When I joined I saved $50 on my tickets and the cost of membership is $59.95 so it was only a $9.95 risk for me to join. Even if I didn’t use any of the savings the rest of the year I would be no more than ten dollars worse off.
The baggage discount
If you are a Spirit $9 fare club member, you get a discount on bags (both carry-on and checked) and that is where being a $9 fare club member has saved us the most money. For the cheapest rate you must purchase your bag more than 24 hours before your flight. You get a $9 discount (each way) for being a $9 fare member for a checked bag and a carry-on bag. Once you can check-in online the price goes up $10 per bag each way, but it’s still $9 cheaper for the $9 fare member.
Since you have to purchase your bags for each way remember to pay for your bag(s) online for both your flight out and your return flight. One checked bag for a round-trip flight will cost $60. It’s $42 if you’re a $9 fare member. One carry-on bag costs $70 round-trip and it is $52 if you’re a $9 fare member.
If you purchase it at the ticket counter it’ll cost you $50 for a carry-on and $45 for a checked bag one-way whether you’re a $9 fare club member or not. If you don’t pay until you get to the gate it’ll cost you $100 per bag (again, this one-way) whether it’s a checked bag or a carry-on. If you brain fart and forget to purchase your bag before online check-in the day you leave, you can still get the cheaper rate for your luggage on your return flight provided you’re not flying back within 24 hours and you will still get your $9 fare rate as long as you pay for your bag online.
Do you get other discounts?
Another interesting thing I just found out is, if you’re a Spirit $9 fare club member, you won’t get a discounted price for a flight/car reservation or on a flight/hotel reservation. I’m assuming this also applies to the Flight/Car/Hotel reservation. You still can get a discount for your bags on the flight, but even if there’s a $9 fare available on the flight you’re flying on, it’s seems to be only available to those flying flight-only reservations.
How long does the membership last?
The $9 membership is good for 365 days from the day you buy it. So if you buy it Sept 8, 2014; your last day of membership will be Sept 7, 2015. You also have to cancel it; the default is automatic renewal. If you know you want to cancel it I would start trying at least a week out to make sure it gets done on time.
It really depends on your personal situation whether or not you you should join the Spirit $9 Fare Club.
For more on Spirit, check out the comprehensive guide:
Everything You Need to Know About Spirit Airlines
Kindly emails deals fare in usa by spirit airline I am $9 member but till now I have not received any deal on my email
No coment
Everytime I log onto the Spirit #9 club it does not accept my password… EVERYTIME I HAVE TO CHANGE IT. Why???
I joined the $9 Fare Club to purchase tickets for a family member and now I cannot use the discount to buy their bags!!
Cancel this immediately. the $9 will turn into a $59.95 charge on your credit card then increase to $69.95 then next.
I consider it an unscrupulous business practice by this company.
Spirit Airlines is very upfront that the cost of the $9 Fare Club is $59.95 to sign up. I mention this in every post when I talk about it. It’s called the $9 Fare Club because sometimes there are cheap fares you can take advantage of for $9 each way.
How do you access them as a $9 fare member? It shows it available but the total cost does not reflect it..it’s full price
Im trying to sign up for Spirit $9 deals. Please help me, I Whatcannot do it. Thanks
Do you have to purchase the 9 dollar fare for each member of your group or if one family member has it and you book all tickets together does it cover all tickets
If I sign up for the club, will It star the same day I want to purchase some flights
Yes, you can wait and buy the membership the day you want to buy the tickets you see, and you can purchase them all in the same transaction and you will be able to get the $9 fares.
Membership is good for 365 days from the day you join. Renewal is automatic if you don’t cancel. They should send you a reminder E-mail that your account is due to renew about a month ahead of time. You’ll have to call if you want to cancel it. Hope this helps!
Do you get anything off of seat assignment fees
Not that I’ve seen. I would only pay for seats if you want guaranteed more leg room (exit row or big front seat). We checked in for our flight yesterday just a little over two hours before our flight and we still got our seats together.
as Cathy said, it is competently unscrupulous. The only way to not have it automatically renewed is to cancel, effective immediately. There is no oppt out of auto renew. If you don’t, you will forget and you won’t notice the fifteen thousandth email from them where they casually mention that they’re about to charge you $70 for another year of this useless club.
I put a reminder on my phone calendar to cancel 2-3 weeks before just in case…
ITs a complete joke. I thought it meant you got 9 dollar baggage fees….NOOOOO its just 9 dollars LESS of their already VERY HIGH fee for a bag!!!! RIP OFF! you would have to fly 9 legs just to break even from their “AWESOME CLUB” !!! HAAAAAAAAA!!!!
cancel as soon as possible. never received any discounts worth anything, and make sure you cancel in writing, because they will still try to charge your credit card. without something in writing to cancel before renewal you will be responsible to pay, and your credit card is hard pressed to do anything for you because spirit has all of the right verbiage in their favor. this is a deceptive practice and I will not fly with them again.
I fly First Class (United) with my wife and for long trips but for quick trips alone I use Spirit and Spirit is AWESOME!!! I don’t take bags anyway so I get a great price on a flight. And they are on-time most of the time!
Sometimes, I even get the seats with leg-room randomly.
All of these people are severely ungrateful. I have flown from Houston to Chicago for less than $50 dollars which is the price for a cab home in Houston.
I had the $9 fare club and it expired about a year ago and I am signing up for it today which is why I was reading this page.
I am confused by all these paragraphs. I need help. I have a reservation on spirit for Friday, sept 23 flight from PHL to LAS at 7:35 pm. I want join the $9 fare club to save money on checking 1 bag on Friday. Last week I paid $50 to check 1 bag on my spirit flight from LAS to PHL. Please tell me if I join how much it will cost to join and check my 1 bag on spirit on Friday evening flight to LAS.
My husband signed up for $9 club. My son and I are planning a trip. Does my husband need to fly too in order to get the cheaper flight or can he just purchase them for us?
i have the same question!
Yes, the $9 Club Fare member must be on the ticket to get the discount. For the discounted ticket or the bags. If the member flies, they can add up to 8 people using their discount. From Spirit’s website:
“Passengers must be reserved on the same booking confirmation number as the $9 fare club member in order to receive membership benefits.”
Since I tended to fly with our kids by myself on Spirit more often than my husband does, I was the $9 fare club member.
Hope this helps!
The $9 bare fare is fraud. You won’t find out it is $59.95 until you get your credit card bill and you have to call your credit card company to remove the unapproved charge.
I’m surprised that so many people seem to miss the price. Spirit says it on their website and I mention it in this blog post. On the Spirit website, when you sign up it says it in large print right above the place where you fill in your membership information:
$9 Fare Club membership enrollment is only $59.95
There is the smaller print below where it says the re-enrollment fee is $69.95, I can see why that one may be easy to miss.
Do you know how I can get emailed the special fares. I recently joined and have NOT received any price specials.
Thank you
ME TOO IT IS CLEARLY STATED. I hope I get a $9 flight sometime. I will be going on weekend trips to see my daughter.
The $9 fare membership is a year charge only correct? Unless you cancel? It is not a monthly charge correct?Can someone please explain the $20 charge after you are billed the annual fee.
It is an annual fee, not a monthly fee. I don’t know why you got charged an additional $20, I would call or E-mail Spirit about that. The sign-up fee is $59.95 for the year, then you will be automatically charged a renewal fee of $69.95 unless you cancel before the next year starts. I usually receive an E-mail from Spirit reminding me about this approximately a month before my membership is set to renew. Good luck!
The Spirit credit card has a card charge of $20. This is not the $9 fare program.
You were charged $20 because you enrolled in spirits trial or “sneak peak”. The auto after is 59.99.
Is there a way for me to see how low a specific fare will be before joining the club? I would like to see the change in price to see if it will be worth it. We don’t fly too often, but might would fly more if the fares were significantly lower.
The fares are online for anyone to see. So if you don’t see one there isn’t one for that flight/day you’re looking at. Spirit’s prices change quickly so even if something doesn’t have a $9 fare one day it always could the next day.
The time I initially signed up was to take advantage of a $9 fare so you can purchase the membership the same day you get your tickets. Hope this helps!
I WAS GOING TO BOOK A FLIGHT YESTERDAY SO I PURCHASED $9 FARE CLUB, I’VE FLOWN WITH SPIRIT MAY TIMES AND WILL MANY MORE SO I FIGURED WHY NOT, IT PUT MY FLIGHT UNDER $50. BUT, I DIDN’T BOOK IT YESTERDAY AND NOW TODAY MY $9 FARE PRICE HAS DISAPPEARED FROM EVER POSSIBLE BOOKING OPTION THROUGH THE LOADED DATES. SO ARE THE DISCOUNT AND BENEFITS BASED ON THE DAY OF BOOKING AND NOT DATES OF TRAVEL?(THEY DON’T SPECIFY THIS SHIT ANYWHERE, I’VE BEEN LOOKING ALL MORNING) ALMOST EVERY TIME I’VE BOOKED HERE BEFORE I PURCHASED $9 FARE CLUB, IT WAS AVAILABLE THEN. NOW THAT I HAVE PURCHASED IT, IT DOESN’T SHOW UP,
When you see a good fare, buy it! check on their promotions, their promos usually last one day or two, the fares go back to regular market price.
Last year I did some researching about purchasing tickets directly at the airport, decided to give it a try and it was Awesome! Purchased round trip tickets to Orlando for a family of 4 and saved $143 on top of an already low fare. Spirit fares were way cheaper than other airlines even after purchasing two checked bags roundtrip. Flights were on time and no complaints! Purchasing direct from airport was a breeze (o’hare) , had husband drop me off and circle while i ran in to buy tickets , literally walked right up to counter with the flights i wanted written down, told the agent what i wanted paid and left, probably took 20 minutes if that! Wont do it any other way from now on! Just joined the $9 fare club and my question is can I buy $9 published fare at the airport? and still save on the passenger utility fee?
Unfortunately not. I asked this years ago and the $9 fare is only good online, you can’t use it when you purchase tickets at the airport or over the phone. I have bought tickets one-way using $9 fares and the other way at the airport if it was cheaper that way. I kept the $9 fare membership for several years even if I never purchased a $9 fare because with the savings in bags I usually at least broke even, but with the new rules for military getting free bags I let my membership expire.
I had never heard of the $9 club – needed to learn about it as I was looking for flights from Newark to Orlando – and found this blog. I just signed up and saved $400 between the flights, checked bags and assigned seats. Flights were huge savings. I thought they were very transparent on the $59.95 price and the auto renewal. I am sure I will forget to cancel the subscription but if this flight goes well we will probably use them again anyway. It will be interesting to see how available the $9 club fares are – maybe I was just lucky this time. Blog was very helpful thanks for your review.
I’m glad it helped! Sometimes you can get a great deal on $9 club fares, sometimes it’s only a discount of $10. It’s a case of catching a good deal at the right time. But even a $10 discount does offset the “passenger usage fee”, especially once you add in the newer discount on purchasing bags the same time you purchase your ticket online you could easily break even buying online vs. at the airport. Since military gets bags for free now we let our $9 membership expire, but if we didn’t have that I’d still use it for the savings in bag fees.
You say military gets bags for free. Do they discriminate between active-duty and national guard when checking ID’s?
Here is what I saw on their site:
Free Bags For Active Duty U.S. Military
For active duty military traveling on Spirit, we will provide two free checked bags and a free carry-on, in addition to the already free personal item. The U.S. military member should arrive early enough to have their bags checked at the counter, and present their U.S. military ID.
Sounds like it must be active-duty ID
Yes, it’s for active (or active reservists) traveling. As a dependent I cannot use the discount unless my husband is traveling with us.
Hi there. I purchased our tickets on cheap tickets website not knowing about the baggage fees. Fortunately I saw that they will check 2 bags and carry on for my husband who is active duty. We are on orders to PCS. Can dependents (myself and my 2 kids) use this benefit as well? Will call to confirm but just wanted to hear first hand from you that you did it. You know how it is when you hear so many different things!
I’m going to be flying in the next couple of weeks just wanted to know how much would I have to pay for my bags if I join the club
Hi I’m thinking about joining the $9 Club just wanted to know how would it work for my bags and do they have a general price
Hey , What is the $9 fare membership trial for only $19.95 ? how do you apply for that ? I wanne try it before I sign up for the $69.95
Beware of the $9 fare club. The $19.95 “trial” may not work until your next booking. Also, if you do join the club, it will automatically renew for $69.95 in a year if you do not cancel. They claim they will attempt to notify you 30 days in advance, but the fine print reads they are “not obligated”. They did not email me in advance of renewal and although I cancelled immediately on learning of the charge, the credit card company would not refund, although the terms clearly stated they will “attempt” to notify you in advance. This “will attempt” wording is contradictory to the “not obligated” clause and should be construed in favor of the customer. Beware, it is not.
Can you get the discount by buying at the airport from the $9 fare club price??
You can only get the $9 fare price online. They will not give you that discount at the airport.
Hi, I bought the $9 fare membership 3 months ago, but on today’s booking they are asking me to buy the membership again as if I don’t have it! I don’t have any membership info per se, so I have no idea what to do. Thanks for your valuable assistance.
If I purchase the yearly membership, do I save right away, on my first trip?
And do $9 fares exist?
My trip isn’t until mid-August so I have plenty of time to worry about this!
Just bought the trial period of the $9 fair club. I made the mistake of not rereading the terms and conditions for the the trial club. They are different from the terms and conditions of the full price club. If you pay $59.95 then you get automatic discount on baggage; however, if you choose the trial club you pay $19.95 and you get do not get the discounts until the next trip, which has to be taken within 60 days.
Deceptive business practices.
My $9 fare club expires in 4 days. If I book $9 fare club flights and the discounted bags today, am I “locked in”, meaning I won’t be charged any additional fees if I cancel my $9 fare club tomorrow?
I have this same question
Hello, I am slightly confused with regard to this membership. If I have a spouse, partner, or other family member, do EACH of us have to enroll separately for the $9 fare club? My niece, and I fly frequently from Myrtle Beach, to Cleveland, Oh, and are trying to decide if this would benefit us.
For Example, If I join this, and my niece wants to fly somewhere; do I have to fly with her? Is there such a thing as a family membership for this, or can they all be added to one account? Thank you kindly!
Only one person on the reservation needs to belong… but the member has to be one of the ones flying. So yes, you’d have to fly with your niece to get the fare.
We were going to fly on Spirit and pay for 4 bags, then I saw this and enrolled, and our bag fees went WAY down. It didn’t do anything for the tickets I had already bought, but now I can fly from LAX to Vegas for a $25 ticket.
I do have a question… why is it that some flights don’t have a special rate for the $9 club members? Is it not every flight?
There aren’t always $9 fares available on all flights. On the fare calendar that comes up when you book and shows higher or lower fares (which I think is great) there is a symbol that shows when there is a $9 fare. If you are logged in (and I forget sometimes) it will show automatically.
I’ve been a member for going on four years now, and it’s saved me far more than the membership price each year by at least $50 – $75. It would be great if they added the seat selection to the discount (though they may have it — to be honest I haven’t looked recently) but the checked bag discount itself has made a huge difference.
The best way to get your best value from them is to do two things – subscribe to the newsletter and check their Twitter feed. The emails have great deals in them (though they come frequently) and it takes me just a short time to scan them, decide if it might apply to me, and then delete it if not. They are also pretty cleverly written.
I’ve also bought my tickets at the Spirit counter at DFW, and that’s about a $19 each way savings, so it’s worth my 30 minutes or so. Our ticket agents have a really hard job to do – I’ve watched it and I don’t think I could be that patient. They have my respect.
All in all, this airline does a great job for what it is – no frills flying. I have had no complaints, no delays, and no issues with them to date. To be fair, I have flown them enough to know the best and “safest” flights for me to book based on routing – I’ve looked enough to know that I need to avoid certain aircraft routings at certain times of the year, and I’m lucky that my preferred flights are usually the least expensive ones. Spirit does require that you are a responsible consumer and consider the “Total Cost of Ownership” that software and computers made so common, and even doing that, they are still one of the least expensive options, at least for me. I’m a fan, I respect their business model (they can tell you exactly how much it costs to fly you – the individual – to your destination) and their snack boxes are less expensive and tastier than AA.
Already booked round trip flights thru justfly.com so there was no option to join the club. Family of 5 traveling end of May from CA to Louisiana. Wondering if I can still join the club now so I can at least take advantage of the baggage & seat selection discounts?