Goodbye, Spirit Gold: Why I’ll Miss My Elite Status Benefits

In 2023, I applied for a status match promotion to receive Spirit Gold status. In exchange for a modest $99 application fee, I enjoyed more than a year of benefits that enhanced my flying experience with Spirit Airlines.

The budget carrier is known for charging fees for everything — even for printing a boarding pass! But with my elite status, I could book low-cost fares and get checked and carry-on bags, seat selection, snacks and drinks, priority boarding, and more — all without paying fees.

Having Spirit Gold status didn’t drastically change how I travel, nor can I pinpoint how much money it really saved me. However, it did offer several conveniences that I’ll miss now that my status has expired.

How I Earned Spirit Gold Status

I applied for a status match with Spirit in April 2023 on a now-expired promotion. I paid $99 to upgrade my Free Spirit status to Spirit Gold using my top-level Hilton Honors Diamond status. It took less than an hour to go from status match application to approval, and my Spirit Gold elite status showed up immediately after that in my Spirit Airlines account.

With the status match, I was offered a full year to enjoy Spirit Gold status, and I’d need to earn 5,000 Spirit Qualifying Points to extend my status further. Under the status match agreement, I won’t be able to use another Spirit status match promotion for another 2 years.

Benefits of Spirit Gold Status

Spirit Gold status offers several benefits that vastly improve the experience of flying with Spirit. These member benefits include:

• Accelerated points earning with 10 points for every dollar spent on fares and 20 points spent on À La Smarte options
• Free shortcut security and Zone 1 priority boarding.
• Free same-day standby
• Free standard seat selection at booking, including exit rows but not including Big Front Seats
• Dedicated guest care phone line
• Ability to create a points pool
• No reward redemption fees
• Free carry-on bag and first checked bag
• Free Flight Flex with a fee-free one-time change up to 24 hours before depature
• Free inflight beverage and snack

Here’s an overview of the benefits that I found most useful.

1. Free Bags

Spirit is known for costly baggage fees and strict size requirements for personal items, so free luggage are arguably the most valuable benefit of Spirit Gold. All passengers can bring a personal item onboard for free, but measurements must not exceed 18 x 14 x 8 inches.

You’ll pay $28 to $99 for a carry-on bag with Spirit, depending on whether you have a Spirit Saver$ Club membership and when you purchase the bag. It’s as low as $28 if you purchase your carry-on bag at booking and have Spirit Saver$ Club, or as high as $99 if you have to pay for it at the gate. For example, if your personal item is too large, you’ll have to pay to carry it on.

On the other hand, checked bag fees on Spirit range from $28 to $149. Like carry-on bags, the lowest cost for checked bags is $28 for the first bag when purchased at booking with the Spirit Saver$ Club. Checked Bag fees can reach $149 when you check a third bag or more.

With Spirit Gold, I had an allowance for a free carry-on bag and a free first checked bag on each flight. As all Spirit passengers do, I also received a free personal item.

As valuable as free baggage can be, I got nothing from this benefit but peace of mind. When I fly Spirit, it’s usually for short trips I’m packing light on. I only brought personal items as baggage in my 15 months as a Spirit Gold member, so I didn’t use this benefit to its fullest potential. 

Still, I tend to pack my backpack up to the limits of personal item sizes, which can spell trouble at the gate if my bag is flagged as too large. For instance, I’d have to pay $99 for a carry-on bag at the gate. 

Having Spirit Gold status was reassuring because I had free carry-on bags as a backup. If I ever packed a smidge too much for my backpack to qualify as a personal item, I planned to just say it was my carry-on with a larger allowance and move ahead with boarding without paying a hefty fee at the gate. 

Since I also had the free checked bag allowance on each flight, I could potentially turn 2 oversized personal items into free bags as long as I checked 1 of them. I always had at least 1 other person traveling with me, so this was certainly possible. Still, I’d expect I might have to pay extra to check a bag at the gate, even if I had an allowance for it. 

Bottom Line:

During my time as a Spirit Gold member, we packed wisely and never exceeded the limits of personal items, so I never had to test my free bags benefit. Still, it was nice to know I didn’t have to stress if we were ever asked to squeeze our backpacks into the personal item sizer at the gate.

2. Seat Selection

Unless you pay an extra fee for seat selection on Spirit, your seat is randomly assigned among available seats. Spirit Airlines doesn’t offer a family seating guarantee but tries to find adjacent seats for kids 13 years old or younger flying with an accompanying adult.

Seat assignment fees on Spirit vary widely, ranging from $1 to $50 for standard seats. Big Front Seat selections range from $12 to $175.

With Spirit Gold, I could choose my seat for free at booking for any standard seat, which included exit row seating but didn’t include Big Front Seats.

I prefer aisle seats and sit in the exit row or at the front of the plane when I can, but I’m not very particular about airplane seats for short flights like the ones I take with Spirit. I’m usually fine with leaving it up to chance, and if the seat lottery decides I get stuck in a middle seat near the bathroom for 3 hours, I can deal with that.

It was nice to be able to choose my seat with Spirit Gold, but this didn’t save me any money because I wouldn’t outright purchase seat selections on Spirit.

If anything, having advanced seat selection with Spirit Gold made family seating more complicated than it would have been otherwise. When I booked flights for my family of 5, I chose a seat for myself (the only one of us with Spirit Gold) and then left the rest of our seats up to the random seat assignments.

Although Spirit doesn’t guarantee family seating, we have yet to experience a flight without a parent seated close to the kids. Usually, my husband was assigned a seat in the same row as the kids. We’d be more picky about seats with younger kids, but ours handle flights well, so it’s fine with us if we at least have eyes on them.

When I checked my family in for flights, Spirit would have me as the first to check in, and I could update my seat selection. Then, I’d check in the rest of my family members and see their seat assignments. Almost every time, the seat I chose for myself was far from where my family ended up, and then I’d have to decide if I wanted to change my seat selection after checking in so I could be with them. 

I can’t help but wonder if we would have had better seats together if I had left my seat up to random assignment rather than using Spirit Gold to choose a seat at booking. If I were a solo traveler, I would have appreciated the Spirit Gold seat selection benefit more, but wasn’t quite beneficial for my travels with my husband or family.

3. Free Snacks and Drinks

Nothing is free onboard a Spirit flight — not even a water bottle. All snacks and drinks are for purchase on Spirit, ranging from $2 for coffee and tea to $3 for soft drinks and $8 to $11 for alcoholic beverages. Snacks range from $3 to $8. 

Spirit Gold members get select free inflight beverages and snacks. These include soft drinks, coffee, chips, candy, pretzels, and other small treats. 

Again, this benefit was nice to havem but far from critical. I always get on a flight with a full water bottle and snacks in my bag, even when I know complimentary snack and beverage service will be available. You never know when a flight will have turbulence, and the flight attendants have to skip service.

Although I wouldn’t have starved without my Spirit Gold snack benefit, I appreciated it. Ginger ale or tomato juice over ice was undoubtedly more tasty than room-temperature water. And they always had my favorite Dot’s pretzels in a bag large enough to share with a travel companion. Still, it didn’t save me any money, as I wouldn’t have gone out of my way to pay for those items.

4. Priority Security and Boarding

Spirit has 4 boarding zones, plus pre-boarding and family boarding. With Spirit Gold, I got Zone 1 boarding, which allowed me to board after pre-boarding. It was nice to get settled in rather than hang around at the gate, waiting for my turn to board. 

However, with assigned seating and usually only traveling with a personal item, I didn’t need to be among the first on the plane to snag a seat or overhead storage. I also experienced some weird zone line adjustments at the gate on multiple flights, where the signs for Zone 1 and Zone 2 were swapped just before boarding and required passengers to move to get into the appropriate line. If I’d had a later boarding zone on those flights, I wouldn’t have had to mess with that confusion.

Spirit Gold also offers Shortcut Security, which provides access to a shortcut security lane at select airports reserved for premium passengers. Shortcut Security applied to all passengers traveling with me on my itineraries. It was available at some airports I flew out of, but I didn’t use this benefit. Instead, I used TSA PreCheck. which I got as a benefit with my Chase Sapphire Reserve^®. 

The TSA PreCheck line was fast enough for me, and I didn’t want to go through the usual security procedures of taking off shoes or removing liquids from bags. I also didn’t need the added complication of finding the right line when I could easily find the TSA PreCheck lines I’m familiar with.

5. Earn Bonus Points

Free Spirit members earn 6 points per dollar on Spirit fares and 12 on À La Smarte options, but Spirit Gold members earn 10 points per dollar on fares and 20 on À La Smarte options, which can help you accumulate points faster.

It was nice to earn more Free Spirit points per dollar spent, but even after years of earning, including more than a year with Spirit Gold, I still don’t have enough points to book a round-trip flight for 2 at the cheapest points redemption possible. 

I have just over 7,000 points in my Spirit account, which includes points earned as a Spirit Gold member. You can book a Spirit flight for as low as 2,500 plus taxes and fees. I ran a test search and found numerous flights between Houston and Las Vegas at this price point. However, I’d have to fly alone if I wanted to cover it entirely on points, as it would cost me 10,000 points to fly round-trip with a companion, and I’m about 3,000 points short. 

Had I looked into using my points while I still had Spirit Gold, I might have been able to cover a trip with my husband. With Free Spirit Gold, Silver, or a Free Spirit^® Travel More World Elite Mastercard^®, you can host a points pool to combine points with family and friends. I could have pooled points my husband and kids earned on their Free Spirit accounts to have enough for a round-trip flight for 2.

Hot Tip:

Spirit just rolled out bundled fare classes, which include ancillary items like seat assignments and baggage. All 4 options include the flexibility of no change or cancellation fees.

How To Keep Spirit Gold Status

As my Spirit Gold status match period neared the end, I did the math on what it would take for me to keep it by earning status. Without a status match, Spirit Gold requires earning 5,000 Spirit Qualifying Points in a calendar year.  

Although 5,000 points doesn’t sound like much, it is a lofty goal in Spirit terms. When I fly Spirit, it’s because I found a decent itinerary at a super-low price. I hardly ever pay more than about $200 on round-trip base fares with Spirit, and if I can’t find a flight for that cheap, I’m probably flying with a different airline.

The main way to earn Spirit Qualifying Points is by purchasing Spirit flights, earning 1 SQP per dollar spent on base fares and À La Smarte options such as seats and bags. The accelerated points earning offered by Spirit Gold status doesn’t apply to SQPs, so I earned my SQPs at the same rate as any other Free Spirit member. 

With Spirit Gold, I didn’t need to purchase bag allowances or seats, so I only earned SQPs on base fares. At $200 round-trip, spending $5,000 with Spirit to earn 5,000 SQPs would amount to about 25 round-trip flights. 

Flying Spirit 25 times in a year isn’t my reality. It might have been closer to reality if I had earned SQPs on all of the tickets I purchased for family on the same itineraries with me, but those points go to the passengers, not the one who buys the tickets. Even then, I’ve never come close to spending $5,000 with Spirit in a calendar year.

Another way to earn Spirit Qualifying Points is with the Free Spirit^® Travel More World Elite Mastercard^®. Every $10 spent on Free Spirit World Elite card purchases earns 1 SQP. That works out to spending $50,000 in a year on the card if you want to earn 5,000 SQPs from the card alone. That’s achievable but not appealing to me. Many credit cards offer far more worthy rewards and benefits for $50,000 in annual spending, so earning SQPs with the Free Spirit World Elite card is not an option I’ll pursue.

Final Thoughts

The perks of Spirit Gold added a bit of comfort to an otherwise basic flight experience. Free baggage, seat selection, and complimentary snacks and drinks made flying with Spirit more enjoyable. While these benefits are valuable, they didn’t significantly alter my experience as someone who chooses Spirit for affordable, no-frills travel with companions. I imagine these perks would be worth it for solo travelers or groups of Spirit Gold status members flying together.

I won’t actively pursue Spirit Gold status by spending with Spirit or on a Free Spirit World Elite card, as the effort and cost to maintain the status don’t align with my travel or financial priorities. That said, I would gladly pay $99 to status match again if the chance arises. While I won’t miss Spirit Gold status enough to chase after it, I did enjoy the convenience and added comforts and would be happy to have it again.