Airlines have been doing anything they possibly can to raise money over the past few months, from checked bag fees to charging for soft drinks to increasing the price for almost everything that formerly had a fee associated with it.

Now, according to an article over at Smarter Travel, Spirit has decided to start charging extra for online seat selection.

Carriers have done this before -- many current legacy carriers charge extra for sitting in an aisle or window near the front of the plane or in preferred seats. But what Spirit is proposing is to charge for ANY seat selected online before departure -- even the seats that most people don't want.

Fees will range from $15 for a window to $10 for an aisle to $5 dollars for a middle seat.

So if you want to sit next to a person that you're traveling with or want to sit in a decent seat and want to pick your spots before departure, you're basically screwed into paying these fees. It looks like you can still go to the airport the day of departure and get assigned seats, but there's no telling who you'll be sitting next to and where at that point.

[Via Airfarewatchdog]

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Spirit Airlines just announced that it would be furloughing nearly half of its crew today, in a letter it sent to it's union leaders. The layoffs, an effort to cut costs and pare down operations, comes as the airline closes hubs in New York and San Juan while significantly shrinking Detroit and Ft. Lauderdale.

While unfortunate news for the employees and the airline, it is perhaps best that the carrier makes these moves before the financial situation becomes too tight. It's best to continue limited operations while the market is sour then keep going strong and run out of money.

Perhaps after the market rebounds and airlines are easily able to operate in the red again can Spirit regain it's balance.

How will this effect the everyday traveler? You'll probably notice some cutbacks in routes and capacity. But the main routes will stay mostly in tact. Try asking your pilot or flight attendant how things are going on your next flight for a real perspective on company morale.

Did your airline lose your luggage recently? Relax, it could be worse. Just ask Barbara Blewitt.

When she arrived in Atlantic City recently on a Spirit Airlines flight, she was shocked at what she found: When her luggage materialized, it was burned, including everything inside.

"I had no clothes, no underwear, no cosmetics, nothing but a burned suitcase," Blewitt tells Tampa Bay's 10 News.

The airline reportedly issued Blewitt a "baggage irregularity receipt," but she has yet to receive compensation. Spirit Airlines tells the television channel that it is looking further into the matter. It is still unclear how this might have happened.

Asks Blewitt, "How do I know how good your plane is if you can't even take care of my luggage, or at least say I'm sorry." A fair question.

Here's another one: Why go to Atlantic City in the first place?

Remember our post a few weeks back in which Alex Rudloff (one of the brains behind our blogging platform) detailed his terrible experience with Spirit Airlines? When Alex wrote the post, comments immediately started to flood in. One of those commenters was a woman named Christy who -- along with her husband -- had a similar bad experience, and emailed Spirit Airlines' customer service department looking for answers. The email was eventually escalated to Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza.

It seems that having a basic understanding of email isn't required to obtain such the CEO position, because Mr. Baldanza made the mistake of hitting "reply to all" (which included Christy) in his snarky response to her quest for answers. Here it is:

"Please respond, [Customer Service Representative], but we owe him nothing as far as I'm concerned. Let him tell the world how bad we are. He's never flown us before anyway and will be back when we save him a penny."

Well isn't that just lovely?

Head over to Alex's blog to see the email in its entirety.

Alex Rudloff, one of the brains behind Gadling's blogging engine, recently tried to fly to Las Vegas from Orlando via Spirit Airlines when he ran into a few problems. First, his flight was canceled. "That's sucks," he wrote on his blog, "but hey, that's the reality of the god awful air industry here in the States."

To make matters worse, Spirit Airlines made the rescheduling process a nightmare. "The 800# then hangs up on me. I call back, hitting 0 to talk to an operator, same message, hangs up on me. I try all the appropriate sounding options on their voice mail, and get hung up on every single time. Thanks, Spirit Air! What went from a somewhat understandable situation (relativity is a bitch), now has me pissy. Finally, I try "book new flight" to speak to a spirit airlines sales agent. Sure enough, that one (the option where they take the money) works fine"

Finally, he's able to speak with a representative who puts him on another flight that arrives 5 hours later. "There's no upgrades or anything like that, no option for a partner airline or a transfer, no real attempt at anything. Here's the kicker. They make you pay extra to bring a bag. They refused to even refund this $5 each way fee, not even for one of ways."

How frustrating. Anyone else have any Spirit Air horror stories?

In today's competitive airline industry carriers have to think outside of the box, be sharper than a razor's edge and fly to destinations where many dare not to go. As of recent, the low-cost carrier, Spirit Airlines, has filed an application with the federal government to fly out of Ft. Lauderdale, FL and into Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Me, personally, I think the news is great and will be all the merrier if things go in favor for Spirit Airlines. First off, it would make the carrier the only big U.S. low-cost airline to offer regularly scheduled service to Haiti. Secondly, I live only a few hours drive from Ft. Lauderdale and I wouldn't mind checking out Haiti for a weekend or so.

However, this short news update from USA Today's blog gets mixed reviews and heated in the comments. If the news sounds good to you keep your fingers crossed or just go check out what some of the other people seem to think about traveling to Haiti.

How all these Spirit Air promotions found their way into my email, I haven't a clue, but I can tell you the only reason I haven't removed myself from their mailing list - they're promotions crack me up! Perhaps, I've got a childish sense of humor, but when I saw the Return of the Mullet sale happening, I had to laugh. Someone please tell me what mullets have to do with scoring discount fares? In their cheesy little promo they claim to place business class travelers in the front and the rest of us with the party in the back, much to the likes of a real mullet hair style. Gnarly isn't it? Well, whether you have a mullet or not or decide to get one on a drunk night in the Dominican Republic check out their low-low fare sale happening right NOW! Their big mullets in paradise, crazy sale ends tomorrow night at 11:59 PM EST and if you're quick you'll land a cheap seat. If you're slow then I guess you won't go.

I could list a small sampling of what the fares are looking like, but there's too many to name and you know who you are, where you need to go and how you plan on getting there. Let me say this though: I've never flown with Spirit, but I'm told their ridiculously low prices are real.