Spirit stroller snafu: My headache at Atlantic City NJ airport

My family and I just got back from a wonderful Spring Break vacation to Florida. Sunshine, relaxation, fantastic family photos, and magnificent memories. Great times were had by all.

For this trip, I was excited to fly non-stop to/from Orlando via Atlantic City International Airport on Spirit Airlines — something I have wanted to do for a long time given rave reviews, but never had a reason to try. Small airports make the traveling experience so much easier and more convenient. And for this trip, the right airfare and logistics just happened to fall into place.

Traveling with young children — and I have four sons under the age of 10 — is often stressful. My wife and I have developed a good routine to get through the airport, TSA security, the arduous pre-flight wait, and the flight itself with minimal headaches and tears.

As long as nothing goes wrong.

Unfortunately, on this trip ... something went wrong.

Hassle

Our experience flying out of ACY was good — the line to check bags was long, but the security wait was non-existent (thanks largely to our TSA Precheck membership). Both our outbound and inbound flights were OK. Orlando International Airport was a zoo, but that is to be expected during the busy Spring Break season.

As you may know, airlines offer an important and much-appreciated convenience to parents traveling with young children: Complimentary gate-checking of strollers and car seats. Even discount airlines including Spirit and Frontier happily do it, free of charge.

The big problem came as we arrived back in Atlantic City on Friday afternoon and were deplaning.

No stroller at the gate.

In fact, there were no strollers waiting at all. (Unsurprisingly, a Spring Break flight from "theme park capital of the world" Orlando had a ton of stroller-age kids onboard.)

After talking to the gate agents, I learned our Orlando flight had arrived 8 minutes behind schedule. Meanwhile, an adjacent Spirit flight from Fort Lauderdale landed 5 minutes early. This small-but-significant time differential meant the limited Spirit baggage handler crew was not available to unload our plane's cache of gate-checked strollers. And so we had to walk to baggage claim to retrieve them instead.

Normally, such an inconvenience would be no big deal. But we had to carry our over-tired, under-stimulated, cranky, hungry one year old through the airport to baggage claim on the lower level. And then we had to hold him while we waited to retrieve our stroller and checked bags. (Yeah, he is a wiggler — that was not fun.)

And it was not just us. When the baggage carousel finally started running, I counted 14 gate-checked strollers that came off our flight. 14 families that had to lug their little ones through the terminal. Because of what I perceived as poor planning and understaffing.

Furthermore

In addition, because the Spirit Airlines ground crew was late in servicing our plane, the wait for bags to drop at baggage claim was excessive too.

And I'm sorry to ding the South Jersey Transportation Authority, but one of the two elevators in the parking garage was out of service. So there was a tremendously long line there too.

By the time we left Atlantic City International Airport property, frustrated and exhausted, almost an hour and a half had passed after our flight landed.

If had we flown through Newark Liberty International Airport? I would have been home by then.

Resolution?

I sent a firm but respectful email to Spirit Airlines' customer service team regarding the stroller mishap specifically.

Less than three hours later, I received a reply. While the $30/person flight credit for the inconvenience was appreciated, it was a generic form response.

"We can assure you that the level of service you receive is not normal with Spirit. I've personally shared your comments with our management team for review and training purposes."

I am fully confident that this problem at ACY will recur over and over again.

Plus, the fact that I had to reach out and complain about the issue — instead of issuing credits proactively and preemptively — is just poor practice.

Conclusion

I fully recognize that there are thousands of things that go wrong on an air travel day, many of which are safety issues far worse than a misplaced stroller and slow baggage crew. But I have to admit this experience leaves a terrible taste in my mouth.

Will I never fly on Spirit Airlines or never fly out of ACY again? Nah, I'm not that much of a "Karen".

But Spirit needs to reevaluate its ground staffing and baggage policies at ACY to prevent issues like this from repeating.

I will consider my travel options much more carefully in the future. Especially given Spirit's ongoing financial woes. And especially since I have never experienced issues like these at Newark, Philadelphia, Trenton, or JFK.

Dan Zarrow is Chief Meteorologist for Townsquare Media New Jersey. Check out Dan's weather blog or follow him on Facebook for your latest weather forecast updates.