On the possible shutdown of discount carrier Spirit Airlines, there’s a lot to be written about business decisions and last-minute negotiations and ripple effects for travelers and the market.
This isn’t that story.
For a year, back in the late teens, I visited the Warren Cleage Evans Terminal at Detroit Metro at least every other week, sometimes early, waiting impatiently, sometimes racing in with minutes or seconds to spare, hoping I’d beat the Spirit Airlines passenger I was there to collect to the arrival doors.
When I’d see his tall figure weaving through the crowd, my heart would clench with the still-new blend of ease and elation I’m now privileged to feel every day in his company.
See, I owe my marriage to Spirit Airlines.
An 8-hour drive, or …
In the early 2010s, my husband and I lived in the same Detroit apartment building. We barely knew each other, our interaction limited to the exchange of casual greetings. He relocated to western Pennsylvania, but we’d become friends on social media, and every so often he’d reach out with a wry observation about the latest Detroit political contretemps or to compliment me on something I’d written. I’d respond, and we’d have a lively back-and-forth.
In 2018, we started talking more often. A lot more often. We’d both recently gone through break-ups, and the draw we’d felt all those years was turning into something bigger. We both wondered if we’d gone crazy; how could either of us be falling for someone we barely knew?
The first time he came to visit, he drove. We talked for eight hours under a tree on Belle Isle; it was clear from the beginning that what we’d convinced ourselves had to be wishful fantasy was the start of something real. But how could we make it work? Neither of us could move, at least right away. We were in love, but the practicalities of adult life couldn’t be dismissed in our 40s as easily as in our 20s. The trek from Pennsylvania takes about eight hours – not exactly realistic for a weekend trip. My son was still in grade school, and it was neither possible nor desirable for me to travel without him, or to involve him at that stage of our budding romance. On most airlines, a ticket cost hundreds. We could afford to see each other occasionally, but would that be enough to understand whether this could work?
I’m sure you can see where this is going.
… a $99-flight?
Every Thursday night, Spirit Airlines offered a flight to Detroit from Baltimore, the airport closest to his Pennsylvania town. The fare was just $99. An accountant, his office was attached to a plant that had an unusual schedule, working nine days across two weeks, meaning he had every other Friday off.
It felt like fate.
For nearly a year, he flew to Detroit every other Thursday and back on Sunday morning. Because of that $99 flight, and my shared custody schedule, we could have the kind of Thursday movies and Friday night dates and lazy Saturdays that couples not separated by 500 miles take for granted. He flew in for family trips and holidays and weekends with nothing to do but enjoy each other’s company. We had our first fights on those weekends ‒ and we learned to make up. When we were confident, my son entered the calculus. We took our first steps together as a family, and we started to see how our lives might fit together. He made the flight with my engagement ring burning a hole in his pocket, and proposed within an hour of landing, too impatient to wait for the elaborate set-up he’d planned for the following day.
By the end of the year, the commute was growing old. And the fare was inching up, first to a still-reasonable $150, then a less-comfortable $200. We had to skip a few weekends, and my first sight of his face through the airport hall became all the more dear. In January of 2019, he pulled up stakes and moved to Detroit.
Ten months later, we got married – under that tree on Belle Isle, with our closest friends and family looking on. Our friend Neal Rubin (now my Free Press colleague) officiated. It was everything we hoped it would be, full of laughter and love.
And Spirit Airlines rated a mention.
“It was love, I think it’s safe to say, and if you need one more thing to show you how real it was, every other week, sometimes more,” Neal quipped, my 6-foot-6 husband “would fly to Detroit ‒ on Spirit Airlines.”
Nancy Kaffer is the editorial page editor of the Detroit Free Press. Contact: nkaffer@freepress.com. Submit a letter to the editor at freep.com/letters, and we may publish it online and in print.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Thanks, Spirit Airlines, your cheap flights are why I’m married | Opinion
Reporting by Nancy Kaffer, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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