When it comes to Spirit Airlines, there’s no shortage of criticisms online lauding the company as one big joke. The budget airline has earned a reputation akin to that of pizzeria Little Caesar’s, where all that matters is that you get to your destination in one piece.
This often leaves customers complaining about the service, comfort, and safety of its flights. AirAdvisor went so far as to rank it the second-worst airline in the U.S., only being trumped by Frontier.
Still, in fairness to Spirit, many have pointed out that amid all the plane crashes in early 2025, the low-cost airline was not among them.
“One TikTok user pointed out in a video with more than 700,000 views that ‘Spirit Airlines has NEVER had a fatal plane crash. So yeah, your $100 flight might not come with legroom… but at least it comes with a safe landing,’” one CNN article from February 2025 reported.
That doesn’t stop passengers from critiquing the company, though. As one passenger on Reddit shared, even the flight attendants give him pause.
What happened on this Spirit flight?
In a viral post on the r/mildlyinfuriating subreddit, user u/Sufficient_Lunch6569 shared a surprising encounter with a Spirit Airlines flight attendant.
The Redditor shares he ordered a $6 Diet Coke from the trolley mid-flight, and was handed a can that tasted “weird” and “off.” He flipped the can and checked the best-by date, which wrote: MAR2425.
“I called the flight attendant over and let him know it was expired (since today’s April 25, 2025), and he looks at the can for like a full minute… then goes, ‘This isn’t expired. It says 2425 — as in the year 2425. You’ve got so many years left,’” the Redditor shares.
“Dude really thought my Diet Coke was good for another 400 years,” he wrote.
The poster says he mentioned it to the staff by the gate and they “looked at him like I was crazy.”
“I’m not mad, I just think it’s hilarious that someone thought soda could survive the next four centuries,” the Redditor concluded.
Viewers slam Spirit Airlines
u/Sufficient_Lunch6569’s post earned 59,000 upvotes as of Saturday, with over 2,900 comments in just one day.
Several top comments mocked Spirit as a whole, partially placing blame on the Redditor for flying the airline in the first place.
“It was spirit airlines. You’re lucky they didn’t throw you out the door mid-flight for speaking up,” one top comment read.
“‘So I was on a Spirit flight.’ Any sentence that begins this way foretells a bad day . . .” another wrote.
And one comment that received a whopping 25,000 votes read, “It’s Spirit Airlines. You are lucky they didn’t charge for oxygen.”
Still, is Spirit as bad as many claim it to be?
Is Spirit actually unsafe?
According to that CNN article from February, it’s not so black-and-white. The outlet spoke to a former Coast Guard pilot who admitted that it’s difficult to call Spirit “safer” since it has fewer flights than other carriers. The piece reports that while Spirit has 700 daily flights, Delta has 5,000, so naturally Spirit will have fewer incidents. However, they certify that all airlines are subject to the same strict regulations.
“If people understood some of the processes that go into assuring an airline safety, they would feel a lot better,” Kristy Kiernan, associate director of Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University’s Boeing Center for Aviation and Aerospace Safety, told CNN.
After filing for bankruptcy last year, Spirit Airlines is now rebranding itself after failed mergers. Reuters reported last month that the airline “plans to rebrand itself as a premium airline.”
So perhaps the reputation as a no-frills, anxiety-inducing airline may remain in the past.
The Daily Dot reached out to the Redditor via Reddit direct message and to Spirit Airlines via email.
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