Save with Allegiant Airlines' Secret Discount!

Low cost airline Allegiant has a secret way to get discounted flights.

If you or someone you know flies Allegiant Airlines frequently, you’ll definitely want to read this.

When you buy Allegiant airline tickets on line or by phone, they charge you a “Carrier Usage Fee”. This fee is to cover the cost of electronic processing costs of using their booking site or their phone agents.

The fee is $22 each way.

Here’s the catch. In order to avoid the $22 Carrier Usage Charge, you must purchase your ticket at the airport at the Allegiant counter.

Sample charges when purchasing a round trip ticket on line:

You may think that saving $22 or $44 isn’t a big deal, but it can add up. I paid for family to fly round trip to join us over the holidays, plus I booked a ticket for myself. Total savings was $264.

There’s a catch. You can’t just go to the airport any ole’ time and buy your ticket. Oh no! Even if someone is checking people in at the Allegiant counter, they can’t sell tickets.

(It is posted on the Allegiant website that you can also purchase tickets “one hour following each scheduled departure”. In other words, if a flight to Orlando leaves on Tuesday at 6:30p, you should be able to purchase tickets from 6:30p-7:30p on Tuesday. However, I have never found the counter to be open when I’ve checked.)

The Allegiant counter is open specifically to sell tickets for one to two hours a week, at designated times.

Every airport Allegiant counter has its own time period once a week to sell tickets. You can find the counter selling hours for your airport on Allegiant’s Airport Ticket Purchase Hours Chart.

Here’s what I did:

I’m going to tell you exactly what I did to receive this savings, and you can decide if it’s worth it the next time you fly Allegiant. ( I am a bargain hunter, so saving money is always worth it to me!)

1) I went to the closest airport on a certain day at a certain time according to Allegiant’s Airport Ticket Purchase Hours Chart. I parked in the one hour parking, so it was $2.

2) I went to the Allegiant desk and told the attendant I wanted to purchase tickets. I was asked to fill out a form with the following information:

Full name of passenger, date of birth, gender

Date(s) of travel, departure and arrival cities, flight number, times of flights

Billing address of credit card you are planning to use

Email address. (The email address is important because that’s how they look up the confirmation. I used mine for all of the tickets.)

I was asked to write all of this information on a form they gave me. In the future I will type it all out so that it is easier to read.

3) I was asked if I wanted to select a seat (more $), add a carry-on (more $), or check a bag (more $). You can add that info later but it could be more expensive.

The attendant wrote the confirmation numbers on the forms and gave them back to me. I did not receive a typed confirmation. I also did not get a copy of the confirmations in my email.

Be sure to follow up!

As soon as I got in my car I went into the Allegiant app to make sure the tickets were listed. They weren’t. I waited a few hours and when they still didn’t appear to be listed with Allegiant, I contacted them on the text chat on the allegiant.com website. I received the confirmations immediately by email and entered them into the Allegiant app.

A nice surprise was the actual price of the tickets (before the $44 was deducted) was less than the on line price of the tickets! Bonus score!

So basically it cost me the time to drive to the airport, park, stand in line, fill out the form, walk to my car, and drive home. Would I do that for $22, probably not. But for $264, absolutely!