By Carly Coombs | Posted: Nov. 18, 2024

Delta plane on the runway at the Salt Lake City International Airport in Salt Lake City, Utah.

If you are planning on flying a budget airline soon, there’s a possibility you can get your tickets cheaper by purchasing them in person at the airport.

Two ultra-low carriers depart from Salt Lake City airport — Spirit and Frontier — and both airlines allow customers to avoid carrier fees by buying tickets at the airport.

The practice is common among budget airlines (Breeze and Allegiant do the same at the Provo airport) since these airlines often apply “optional” fees to tickets when customers purchase online or over the phone.

Because these fees are considered optional (since you can avoid them at the airport), airlines don’t have to pay the 7.5% federal excise tax that is added to base fares in the U.S., saving the airline a bit of cash.

Spirit and Frontier both add an additional fee — Frontier adds a “carrier interface charge,” and Spirit adds a “passenger usage charge” — when customers book online or over the phone.

Spirit’s fee varies, ranging from about $4 per segment to $23, and Frontier charges up to $23 per segment. You can see how much the fee will cost you online at checkout before you purchase a ticket.

To see how much the fees vary based on a flight on Spirit, I looked up a round-trip ticket from SLC to Las Vegas to see how much I could save at the airport.

In this case, the passenger usage charge only makes up about $8 of the ticket, which wouldn’t save you much for going through the hassle of driving to the airport and waiting in line at the ticket counter.

Screenshot of the taxes and fees on a Spirit Airlines flight from Salt Lake City to Las Vegas.

On this direct, round-trip flight to Orlando, though, the fee is about $46 of the total ticket price. So, if you’re booking flights for your family of five to Disney World, buying at the airport could save you around $230.

Screenshot of the taxes and fees on a Spirit Airlines flight from Salt Lake City to Orlando.

For Frontier, I looked up a round-trip from SLC to Denver. For this flight, the carrier interface charge was just under $8 on a flight that’s $48 total. Similar to Spirit’s flight to Las Vegas, the savings aren’t very high.

Screenshot of the taxes and fees on a Frontier Airlines flight from Salt Lake City to Denver.

But, on this direct flight from SLC to Chicago, the carrier interface charge is $46 ($23 each way), which would make the $108 flight only $62 at the airport.

Screenshot of the taxes and fees on a Frontier Airlines flight from Salt Lake City to Chicago.

If you’re flying on Spirit or Frontier, the cheapest ticket price won’t include bags, seat selection, etc., with those services garnering an additional fee. If you need to add extras like bags, they will cost you more at the airport. But luckily, you can add extras online after you purchase the initial flight, allowing you to get the cheapest price.

Ticket counters for both Frontier and Spirit are open during certain hours of the day in Salt Lake City. Frontier’s website says its ticket counters typically open two hours before a departing flight and close an hour before departure (you can look at the airport’s flight board here).

Spirit’s counters are open from 4:30 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. daily. But, the airline lists 7 a.m. to 9 a.m. and 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. as its “preferred ticketing hours.”