Travel Product Reviews
Travel Tuesday: Allegiant Extra Review – Worth the Upgrade?
Right before the pandemic, I was booking an Allegiant flight to Las Vegas and saw an option for Allegiant Extra. This upgrade included extra legroom, priority boarding, and other perks. Naturally, as something of an Allegiant connoisseur, I had to try it. Of course, as you can imagine, that trip was canceled — and, on subsequent flights I’ve taken on the airline, I never again saw this Allegiant Extra feature, leading me to wonder whether it was even still a thing. Well, that was until a few weeks ago when I saw this option available on a flight from Springfield, Missouri to LAX (and back). So, four years later, I finally had a chance to try Allegiant Extra and can now speak to the experience and whether or not I think it’s worth the upgrade.
Allegiant Extra: What To Know
What is Allegiant Extra?
According to the Allegiant site, the Allegiant Extra section offers a minimum of 6″ in additional legroom as well as reserved overhead bin space and priority boarding. Of course, since these seats make up the first few rows of the plane (in my case, rows 1 through 7 with there being no row 6), Allegiant Extra passengers are also first to receive in-flight service.
From what I can tell, Allegiant Extra is only offered on select aircraft in the carrier’s fleet. That’s because the cabin needs to be configured to accommodate the additional legroom — which is probably what happened to row six. In my case, looking at other available flights on this route, I don’t see Allegiant Extra, so I’m not sure how many aircraft offer it or where said aircraft are employed. I guess it’s just an “if you get lucky” kind of thing for now.
The cost
Looking at my receipt, my Allegiant Extra seats in Row 5 were about $54 each way. For context, regular seats near the front of the plane usually cost me around $33 while bulkhead seats (which also provide extra legroom by way of the fact that there’s nothing in front of them) are $37. Meanwhile, Priority Access costs $13.50 per way — at least it did for my flights. With that factored in, you’re really paying about $7.5 more for the extra legroom.
Having said that, keep in mind that pricing for Allegiant can vary by route, flight, etc. Therefore, this price breakdown may not be exact to your situation.
Boarding
For me, Priority Access with Allegiant is a must as I want to ensure that my carry-on is placed right above me — otherwise, it’s pretty much game over. That’s why I was quite excited to see that Allegiant Extra included priority boarding.
Unfortunately, I found a couple of flaws with this perk. First, even if you have Allegiant Extra selected when booking, the site still offers Priority Access as an add-on. This is confusing since, in theory, that would be redundant. That’s why I skipped Priority Access when booking. However, when I checked in, I noticed that my boarding pass had me in Group 7 instead of Priority.
When I asked the gate agent about this, they didn’t seem to know about Allegiant Extra in general and weren’t sure about the boarding situation (to be fair, I’m not sure if the gate agents at SGF work for Allegiant as most others work for the airport itself and not the carriers). Nevertheless, they said I could board with Priority Access anyway. While this was nice of them, it made me worry about my return flight as I didn’t want to go through a similar situation again. So, before checking in, I paid for Priority Access and was all set.
At LAX, when the gate agent called for Priority Access, she also mentioned Allegiant Allways Rewards cardholders — and those seated in rows 1 through 7! In other words, I didn’t need to buy Priority Access after all. But, my question is: why isn’t Allegiant’s system smart enough to reflect this priority boarding on your actual boarding pass? To me, this is a pretty big flaw in what would otherwise be an awesome benefit.
The legroom
Putting my bag under the seat, the extra legroom was immediately apparent to me. Even if my backpack had been blocking the entirety of the under-seat space, 5-foot, 5-inch me still would have had plenty of room to stretch my legs nearly completely. Needless to say, this made for a much more comfortable flight — and I’m sure that would be even more true for those who are far taller than I am.
Of course, speaking of comfort, you’ll notice from my feature image that the seats on Allegiant are still very thin in terms of padding. Again, this might not be a big deal for me but I’m sure it’s more noticeable for others. Sadly, that’s one issue that even Allegiant Extra can solve (maybe they should try Allegiant Extra Cushion next?), so you may want to take that into consideration.
Final Thoughts on Allegiant Extra
Despite the priority boarding debacle, I was still quite impressed with my Allegiant Extra experience. Not only was the extra legroom ample but the price paid was honestly more than reasonable. In fact, even without the Priority Access (which, to be clear, is included but really needs to be better integrated into Allegiant’s system), this would still be a steal.
For comparison, I looked up the Main Cabin versus Comfort+ pricing difference on a Delta flight from Kansas City to LAX for random dates in October. To my surprise, the upgrade was $240! And, by the way, Comfort+ does have priority boarding, but it’s not the first group after pre-boarding like Allegiant’s Priority Access is.
The moral of the story is that, if Allegiant Extra is available on future flights I take with the carrier, I will absolutely be springing for it. In turn, if you have the option and don’t mind paying a few dollars extra, I think the upgrade is well worth it.
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