At last, we get to the budget airlines which, in fairness, are a bit more open about how terrible they are. Like its cheapo competitors, Allegiant offers you an impressively low price that nets you a seat on a plane, period. “We collect $110 from you at the end of your trip,” CEO Maurice J. Gallagher Jr., put it plainly in a 2009 interview. “If I tried to charge you $110 up front, you wouldn’t pay it. But if I sell you a $75 ticket and you self-select the rest, you will.”
Allegiant is also famous for safety problems. A series of investigations in 2016 and 2017 found Allegiant was as much as four times more likely than other airlines to have in-flight mechanical problemsincluding “mid-air engine failures, smoke and fumes in the cabin, rapid descents, flight control malfunctions, hydraulic leaks, and aborted takeoffs.”
