PG: Then there was the issue of the DOT and its new rule-making procedure about transparency and how you advertise and how you display fares. And you took ’em on.

BB: We did take ’em on. Because we thought it was a disingenuous thing.

PG: The whole background of it was that what they were claiming was that when I see a price advertised, that should be the price I’m going to pay.

BB: That was their argument and we did go against them.

Let me explain to what happened when you bought a ticket on Spirit before this rule. When you bought a ticket before this rule, you say, “Okay. I want to fly from A to B.” And you would see a calendar that would show the date you picked and two weeks before and two weeks after of all the price points without taxes and fees.

And then when you say, “Okay, I want go on this day,” maybe it’s the original day you picked, maybe it’s another day ’cause the price is lower, when you picked on that day, the next screen you saw was, “Here’s your price, here’s your taxes and fees, here’s your total price. Now, do you want to buy bags? Do you want pick where you sit on the plane?”

What the DOT law requires that we do is that we don’t have those two screens anymore, that the price in the grid is the price with the taxes and fees. But it’s not the final price you’re going pay. And it’s not the final price that most customers on any airline pay.

Every airline has charges for some things beyond the ticket price. Southwest has lots of them. They charge if you want to board the plane early, if you’re an unaccompanied minor, if you have a third bag, if you have an overweight bag, right. Airlines charge for a lot of different things. So the final price you pay includes things other than just the required taxes and fees.

Putting the taxes and fees in the ticket price does is hides from consumers how much they’re payinn in taxes. Right? If you’re paying $80 for your flight and $25 in taxes for $105, isn’t it better for you those employee $80 plus $25 than just see $105?

When you see $105, that’s the airline’s charge. Do you know that you’re paying $25 to the government in taxes for that?

Our view was that rule, which was wrapped around a customer advocacy blanket, “This is good for consumers,” really says, “Consumers are dumb because consumers don’t know they have to pay taxes.”

That’s what that law says. Now when you go to a restaurant and you see your entree price, does it have the taxes in it? When you see a car advertisement and they advertise the great new Honda Accord, does it have the taxes in it or does it say, “Plus tax (UNINTEL) license?” But the airlines are separated out like cigarettes, and say, “Customers shouldn’t see how much they’re paying in taxes. You have to hide that in your fares so they only see the total price.”

PG: You took on the government claiming that was an infringement upon your rights of free speech.

BB: That’s right. We and Southwest and Allegiant all did. That’s right.

PG: And you lost.

BB: We did lose. The court said we didn’t make the case strongly enough. And in fact, what the court said, the court used our own website against us in a way. On our website if you buy a ticket, you’ll see, “here’s the Spirit price, here’s the government take and here is your total price.”

And we also do the math for you and show you your tax rate on the flight. We say, “Your effective tax rate on this flight is 25% or 18% or whatever it is.”

They used that display to say that airlines have been able to deal with this rule in creative ways so that customers still see what they’re paying in taxes. The challenge and the unfortunate challenge for us is, the website’s just one place we show our fare. We can’t do that display on a billboard or on a radio ad, or on things like that. And so lots of times when customers see our fares, they just see the total price. They don’t see it broken out. When they come to the web, they do, though.

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