Why Frontier Is America’s Worst Airline

JFK TERMINAL 7, New York City- “I’m just thinking about all the core memories we lost because of this,” a mother with two kids said as she choked back tears.

By this point she thought she would be on the beach in San Juan with her two kids, playing and making the priceless memories that vacations are built for. But instead she was still at her point of departure, stranded in the airport, having not gone anywhere, sulking in the knowledge that a full 25% of the vacation she spent many months planning and saving for was gone …

Because of airline incompetence.

Frontier 3545 was supposed to have departed from JFK at 11 am but didn’t begin boarding until after noon. We eventually were called to get on the plane and we all filed through and took our seats. And then we sat there. And sat there.

And sat there.

Where we sat for two hours.

I woke up from my nap expecting to be in the air somewhere over the eastern seaboard of the US but looked out the window to find that we were still at the gate. We hadn’t moved.

Eventually, the pilot came over the PA and said that they were having difficulties coming up with a flight path or something. But emails from Frontier said something very different:

“We’re sorry that your flight #3545 … from JFK to SJU – San Juan, Puerto Rico on June 26, 2024 has been delayed because of flight crew regulations.”

In other words: “We screwed up and you’re going to have to pay for it”

We were probably sitting at the gate because the airline was scrambling to source pilots from Philadelphia or somewhere. Eventually, people began getting restless. A woman began screaming about how horrible Frontier is and airline staff had to board to calm her down. Then another woman began screaming about how horrible Frontier is … Two hours ticked by and we were just sitting there.

“We’re not going anywhere,” I eventually said aloud to nobody in particular.

The passengers to my left and right looked at me with with horror in their eyes. “What do you mean?”

“This flight is a quick turn around, if anything goes wrong the pilots or crew time out. They’re going to kick us off.”

A little while back Frontier entirely changed their logistics model. Rather than having routes where the crew would have overnights in the places they fly to they would do every flight as a turn around. So a flight would leave from its base to another destination and then turn right around and come back on the same day. This model is designed  so the airline doesn’t have to put their crews up in hotels as often. However, it doesn’t really work very well — if anything goes wrong then the crew is going to go over the time that they are allotted by law to work … and when you’re flying Frontier there is a lot that can go wrong.

And a strategy that’s designed to save money often only results in a domino fall of delays and cancelations … and pissed off passengers.

On a recent earnings call, the Frontier CEO tried to blame this issue on air traffic control — not the fact that he runs a poorly organized airline that can’t get out of its own way.

While my general position is that all airlines suck — at least those based in the USA — Frontier sucks with a particular intensity and flare. They are America’s worst airline for a reason. This isn’t hyperbole — they’re so bad they actually win awards for it. Based on criteria including reliability, comfort, safety, price, customer reputation, airline lounges, professional reviews, family travel, and traveling with pets, AirAdvisor found Frontier to be at the bottom of the pack — even below Spirit.

And keeping to their form, Frontier left us sitting on the plane for another hour. Eventually, a flight attendant got on the PA and directed her team to “prepare the cabin for arrival.”

Prepare the cabin for arrival … for a flight that didn’t go anywhere. A stale joke that nobody found funny.

Twenty minutes later the pilot came on and stated that we were going to begin the de-boarding process.

We knew then that our vacation would be disrupted; that we would lose time together in Puerto Rico; that we would lose money — our hotel reservation at this point was non-refundable — all due to airline incompetence.

Things started getting hostile in the baggage claim area. One guy accidentally backed into another guy and they nearly came to blows over it. People were pushing through each other trying to get up to the front, yelling questions out to the gate agent who was in the middle of the mob. The gate agent got on the PA and calmed everyone’s nerves:

“Everyone will be refunded, everyone will be given hotels, everyone will be given food vouchers.”

While this didn’t necessarily appease anyone, it did at least extend the fuse on the powder keg.

“You will receive two emails,” the gate agent continued. “One will have your options for another flight. The other will have your compensation — your hotel and food voucher.”

So we all stood there waiting. Eventually gasps of exasperation and laughter began emitting from the crowd. We received the first email to be able to select new flight options … but the link didn’t work. It just sent us to a page that said, “Session has no active disrupted flights, expiring session.”

We discovered the reason for this an hour later — were not able to select another flight, as is customary in this situation, because our flight wasn’t cancelled, it was a delayed flight — a 20 or so hour delay until the following morning. We were expected to ether go home or sit around the airport until then.

While there are companies like AirHelp who assist passengers in getting adequate compensation, we were already promised hotels and food, so I figured I’d just wait for the second email that would include our vouchers.

That email never came.

There was around a hundred of us just standing together in the rebooking section of the arrivals hall just looking at our phones … for literally hours … for an email that was never sent.

By this point the crowd was getting unruly. We had just endured a delayed boarding, two hours of sitting on the plane, and then another three hours of standing around waiting for some fabled email … all the while the gate agents were promising us hotels and food and anything else they could think of.

Passengers organizing after being “Frontier-ed.”

A couple of female passengers then began organizing us — one got the number for the Department of Transportation, wrote it on a piece of paper, and began urging everyone to call to file a report. The other lady seemed like she wanted us to begin chanting … This was getting ugly, and the Frontier gate agents began looking like thieves caught by a lynch mob. They knew this was getting bad.

Passengers organizing after being “Frontier-ed.”

Another exasperated laugh soon rolled through the crowd. We got a second email from Frontier, yes, but it wasn’t our hotels and food — it was a $75 voucher for another Frontier flight. In other words, insult to injury.

Needless to say, that didn’t keep the mob at bay. Eventually, the gate agents had everyone who wanted a hotel to come up to their kiosks so they could write down our confirmation numbers on a piece of paper so they could manually enter them into their system and get us hotels.

Apparently, whatever they were doing to get us our hotels the first time — more than likely stalling so more people get tired of waiting and just get hotels on their own — wasn’t working. We now had to resort to a 1980s era protocol and have things done completely by hand …

As we were left waiting for an email… again.

And we waited …

And we waited …

Then an email arrived!

It was for a measly $10 food voucher.

And then we went back to waiting …

I eventually cornered a gate agent and asked her in her experience how long it takes to get hotel vouchers.

“I haven’t done this before,” she said. “This is my first day.”

She was lying to my face.

I know someone who flies for Frontier and I sent him a picture of the lady and he said he’s seen her working there before.

I then began explaining to her how when other airlines cancel flights they provide hotels and food almost instantaneously.

“I don’t work for the other airlines,” the gate agent snapped back, “I work for Frontier.”

Again, she was lying to my face.

Frontier hires a third party company to provide their gate agents and they are not actual Frontier employees.

Nothing says customer service like ear buds.

This is a major part of why Frontier is America’s worst airline. It’s not just all of the delayed and canceled flights, it’s not just that they used to financially incentivize gate agents to nail people for not abiding by carryon baggage restrictions (they were sued for this), it’s not just that their Go Wild passes are literally impossible to use (they should be sued for this), it’s also not that they now charge a $120 fee if you need personal assistance at check-in … It’s that their gate agents tend to be under-vetted, under-trained, and are downright rude to passengers. They have no stake in the company — and why would they? They’re not even actual Frontier employees.

After waiting a total of four hours after we were forced off the plane that didn’t go anywhere the hotel voucher emails begin arriving. But, as is customary of Frontier, there was a catch:

Only half the people who spent all this time waiting — who were promised hotels — actually received vouchers. Apparently, one of the reasons why we were waiting for so long for the vouchers was because some jobsworth at some tech center at Frontier was going through the manifest of passengers requesting hotels to deem whether or not they lived far enough away from NYC to warrant one. So some passengers were compensated and others were not.

Some passengers who were not compensated lived over two hours away … Some lived in CT, some in NJ, and some, like us, had some reason why they couldn’t return to their homes.

(In our case, we had to get out because our landlord wanted to repair some damage to our walls.)

At this time we thought this was going to be the lowest blow of all. But we were wrong. Frontier had another surprise for us:

Those passengers who did receive a hotel voucher quickly discovered that their hotels were over an hour away and Frontier refused to pay for transportation. Seriously, on a flight that was supposed to depart from JFK, Frontier was giving passengers rooms way out on Long Island or in New Jersey — a different state.

The voucher recipients were now comparing the Uber rates to get to their hotels, and they were all invariably over $100. So that would be at minimum a $200 round trip to access their “free” hotel.

More than likely this was by design. Frontier probably did the math and realized that if they provided passengers with hotels that were far enough and expensive enough away that few people would actually take them … and Frontier would subsequently get out of paying for them.

People are now freaking out.

“But I need transportation. I can’t afford $200 for this …”

“Frontier will not provide transport.”

I imagine some Frontier executive sitting in an office somewhere laughing his ass off: “Yup, we got them a hotel … but let’s see how many actually take it!”

The mother with the two kids from the beginning of this story now couldn’t check back the tears. She was not given a hotel due to the fact that she had a NY address. Not only was their vacation disrupted but she’d now have to pay $300 in unexpected transportation fees to get home and back for the flight the following morning. She kept asking the gate agents what she was supposed to do as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“What am I supposed to do?” she kept asking.

A male gate agent just looked at her and in all seriousness told her to sleep on the floor.

“A lot of people do it,” he said.

Mother of two in tears after being told by Frontier gate agents to sleep on the floor after their airline’s incompetence disrupted her family vacation.

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