What was supposed to be a celebration of its inaugural flights between Philadelphia and Dallas/Fort Worth turned into a nightmare for Spirit Airlines, when they were forced to cancel the flights, due to an apparent bureaucratic delay at the Federal Aviation Administration that many believe to be a direct result of the sequester.
According to The Philadelphia Inquirer, the snafu dampened what was "supposed to be a festive celebration at Philadelphia International Airport's Terminal A East on Thursday, with greetings from Mayor Nutter, an Elvis impersonator, and cowboy hats for everyone as Spirit Airlines began nonstop service to Dallas-Fort Worth."
The cancelation gave Spirit no choice, but to "fly 78 Philadelphia-bound passengers to Atlantic City, where Spirit has offered service for several years. Those fliers were then bused the 55 miles to Philadelphia. And the 128 Texas-bound passengers scheduled for Spirit's inaugural Philadelphia-to-DFW flight were put on other airlines, all at Spirit's expense," reported USA Today.
The airline also refunded all the passengers' fares and flew them for free.
Spirit told the Inquirer that "the FAA approval Spirit needed to begin the route did not come in time. That, the carrier tells the Inquirer, marks the first time that's happened for a domestic route in Spirit's 25 years of flying. Spirit says it followed all of the same procedures it normally has in the past."
What this means is that the FAA is to blame, but, as the Inquirer made sure to report that "Spirit did not criticize the FAA but acknowledged that the only difference now is the federal spending cuts that began March 1."
Before any airline can start a new route, they must get FAA approval and show the administration that safety procedures are in place for handling aircraft on the ground and Spirt believes they had all of those issues taken care or and didn't do anything different from other times that they needed FAA blessings.
"We followed our normal process, which was to submit our application to fly, through the regulatory folks at the FAA within the appropriate time," Spirit COO Tony Lefebvre says to the Inquirer. "Normally, we get expeditious approval and have no issues."
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