Spirit Airlines: 'Check Out The Oil On Our Beaches!' (PHOTO)

Spirit Airlines wants you to enjoy Florida's oily beaches, and the discount airliner isn't apologizing for it.

On Tuesday, the company urged customers to "Check Out The Oil On Our Beaches, Plus $50 Off" in an email blast and promotion on the front of its website, sparking outrage that the airline would make light of the crude gushing into the Gulf of Mexico and fouling beaches. (The promotion is still going, featuring women lounging on beaches covered in tanning oil.)

"It is unfortunate that some have misunderstood our intention with today's beach promotion," the airline said in a follow-up statement, a classic in the we're-sorry-you're-such-an-idiot genre. Spirit primarily serves the Southeast and Caribbean.

Spirit, which recently made news for a pilot strike that canceled flights, is better known for being among the first in the industry to begin charging for luggage. It has never been one to shy away from controversial, sexist or offensive remarks in its promotion, which it routinely dubs "Red Light Specials."

Some off-color Spirit promotions from the past months:

"We're Proud of our DDs!" -- by which they say they mean "Deep Discounts"

"Pole Dancing Can Be Cold!" -- something about not going to the North Pole, but instead to sunny beaches

"MUFF to Diving Destinations!" -- according to Spirit, that would be "Many Unbelievably Fantastic Fares"

Comments

[owlspig]

11:12 AM on 07/13/2010

Airlines generally like to use female bodies for advertising and PR purposes:

http://www.mn.ru/news/20100712/187926015.html

[ShannonInMiami]

11:30 AM on 06/30/2010

So it's okay for Letterman to tell bad (really bad) gulf oil jokes but Spirit Air can't?

Clearly people need to lighten up.

My motto has always been and always will be, "it ain't advertising if people don't react to it."

[futbol4fun]

11:32 PM on 06/24/2010

This is hilarious. It is an ad that has humor, originality and keeps a tragic situation in the news. I have no problem with it. If the people of the Gulf states do, they should have considered that when they were electing people who didn't even care about them of their families in the first place.

[ebanks84]

12:58 PM on 06/24/2010

Totally despicable!

[meercat19]

01:48 AM on 06/24/2010

simply disgusting

[futbol4fun]

11:44 PM on 06/24/2010

If they had put a blond on the picture I wold probably agree with you. They're a dime-a-dozen. But a fetching Brunette like that lifts it into a whole new stratosphere.

[ccurtis]

01:47 AM on 06/24/2010

Those ads remind me of skin cancer or George Hamilton. He was super tan.

[ismaris]

06:29 PM on 06/24/2010

Don't forget Boehner

[futbol4fun]

11:45 PM on 06/24/2010

Or the older woman from "Something About Mary".

[LMPE]

11:47 PM on 06/23/2010

WTF

[drymartini3]

10:31 PM on 06/23/2010

It appears that nobody here watches the superbowl ads? so many of them are tacky year after year.

all outrage suddenly over spirit?

[JaneDoeHere]

11:10 PM on 06/24/2010

Tacky is one thing- this is reprehensible.

[futbol4fun]

11:35 PM on 06/24/2010

This is hilarious. Do you know how hard it is to find an advertisement that is both funny and original? The people of the Gulf States are simply reaping the harvest that their elected officials prepared for them. Now these same people want to start drilling again, screw their feelings.

[futbol4fun]

11:48 PM on 06/24/2010

This country seems to have some warped sense of what our puritanical values are. Do people think that this is more disgusting that calls to start drilling new wells? Do we not understand that the people of these (Republican) States elected the very people that made this possible? And I thought that Palin was the only person that shrugged responsibility.

[TOPCAT711]

09:43 PM on 06/23/2010

WOW - a whole bunch of 'bad taste' here.

[nexxtep54]

09:32 PM on 06/23/2010

“That well is easily pumping out 1bbl / second. Oddly, it seems like Future Pipe Industries in Gulfport has a fix for the leak. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UP8iN4ZX1JU&feature=channel” Why this isn't national news is beyond me. Why this travel ad is shown on Huffpo and this fix is not is also beyond me.

[futbol4fun]

11:41 PM on 06/24/2010

It also seemed like BP knew what they were doing when they drilled this well. Let FPI actually implement their ideas as to determine their efficacy. If it works, then I agree with you that it does deserve national media attention. But this is a pretty tough room, words and claims to have a fix are not the same as a fix itself.

[ROLtheWolf]

09:11 PM on 06/23/2010

Very Classy

[inthedesert]

07:26 PM on 06/23/2010

Wow..it's amazing how LOW some companies will stoop to reap a profit off of other's woes....Well.....it IS the American Way....right?

[futbol4fun]

11:37 PM on 06/24/2010

right

[Blues02]

06:10 PM on 06/23/2010

Tacky

[Tommygun264]

05:41 PM on 06/23/2010

It's only a matter of time until the oil sweeps up the entire eastern seaboard.

[thaggas]

05:31 PM on 06/23/2010

I hear that Spirit is now going to start charging a fee for carryon d-bags.