This past weekend Frontier Airlines canceled over 275 flights across its network. While that may not seem like a lot when 5,000 were canceled nationwide, 275 is an entire day’s schedule for the budget carrier! Horror stories like this are why I have a serious problem flying Frontier.
[Calling experts on flying Frontier with a family]
Seattle-Tacoma Airport (SEA-TAC)
A single storm system at the airline’s Denver hub wreaked havoc for the entire network. Nearly a quarter of the airline’s departures are from Denver, and many of these departures were canceled or delayed. Other Frontier flights were affected as well, as Frontier was not able to position personnel to operate them. Aircraft, passengers, crew, and baggage were stranded. One of Frontier’s own captains blamed the operational breakdown on “executive mismanagement and misplaced focus on cost-cutting” by the airline. Ouch.
Check out this video of the insane line at DIA on Saturday.
All these peoples flights got canceled by frontier at DIA. The video goes on for another 30s but I cant share the whole thing #frontiersucks pic.twitter.com/3ge2UniATF
— Isaac kniss (@Jumpingpanda7) December 18, 2016
The Problem Flying Frontier: When Irregular Operations Hit
Frontier advertises “low fares done right”. You pay for your fare, and then add on any extras you want. They offer incredible sales at times, which may seem like great value. And it is, at least until something goes wrong.
Frontier is not just cheap when it comes to fares, but it is also cheap when it comes to customer service. When a couple’s only recourse is to either get a refund or be re-booked three days later(!), something is terribly awry. You could at least offer them a hotel. Yes, airlines don’t oblige themselves to offer accommodation when delays are due to weather. But when a single storm can mess up operations so badly that you cannot find a seat for two passengers until half a week later, one begins to think it may be an operations problem and not a weather problem.
The problem flying Frontier is that the carrier’s network is limited, and offers fewer flights between destinations. If one is canceled, or an aircraft can’t position in time to provide service, customers may wait days before Frontier manages to get them to their destination. The entire system breaks down. Bags pile up. The customer service line becomes endless. For leisure travelers who saved up precious paid-time-off for the holidays, wasting days of it at the airport is simply unacceptable.
I flew in and out of Denver this past weekend on United, albeit after the worst of the storm. To my knowledge, one SFO-DEN flight was canceled by United on Saturday, causing some cascading overbooking of later flights. Even with these problems, however, United was able to get a substantial number of people on my flight to their DEN connections, by holding their Denver departures. The delays were certainly felt, but they weren’t crippling.
Contrast United’s roughly 11 daily departures versus Frontier’s 2 between SFO and DEN. One flight out of 11 canceled doesn’t seem too bad. One flight out of 2 would be devastating (one did get canceled yesterday). When irregular operations hit, Frontier simply doesn’t have the resources needed to quickly get things back on track.
Customers Get Left out in the Cold
Frontier makes no effort to re-book customers on flights with other carriers. They simply can’t afford it with their budget model. Thus, travelers either have to pay top dollar for last minute tickets with another carrier, or wait days to make it to their destination. Suddenly your $100 “savings” flying Frontier has now cost you an extra $300 for last-minute tickets on Southwest.
Frontier may offer “low fares done right”, but they also offer “customer service and operations done wrong”. If you value reliability, you may want to pass on that next Frontier fare sale. Remember that you get what you pay for, and that includes things beyond simply a seat and baggage allowance. There may be situations where flying Frontier makes sense (SEE: Calling experts on flying Frontier with a family), but during times where timing is critical and weather could be bad, I would avoid.
When irregular operations hit, the customer is hung out to dry. That’s the problem flying Frontier.
Header image courtesy of Razvan Socol via wikimedia commons under CC 3.0 license.
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
This is one of the many reasons, but probably the top reason why you shouldn’t fly any ULCC. Spirit and Frontier are not worth the risk in my mind. Bad weather and mechanical delays are bad enough on legacy carriers, but at least they have options.
I get what you mean Dan but I also think you need to look at this from a different set of perspectives.
1. You are right. If you absolutely have to be somewhere, fly non-stop on the airline with the most flights (and connecting options) and the highest reliability.
Example: I have an important sales meeting at 2 PM on Monday. I would fly out the night before to not even take a risk.
2. If you are well off enough and flexible enough to “Self insure” (as in I fly 20 times a year and flying a ULCC vs. a legacy will save me $100 per flight so $2,000 a year and I’ll end up having to buy 2 last minute tickets at $500 a pop each year meaning net I come out ahead $1,000) go ahead and fly the ULCC. Another example of this is if you have enough Southwest points, self-insure by booking a later backup flight on Southwest and cancelling when your ULCC flight works out fine.
3. If you aren’t well off enough to self insure but are well off enough to fly a legacy – go for that.
4. If you aren’t well off enough to self insure AND aren’t well off enough to fly a legacy – fly the ULCC or stay home.
Unfortunately while I’d be fine doing #2 overall, I’m mostly flying for the reason in #1 so don’t find myself on the ULCCs often but have used the Southwest points backup method before – not had to use it yet.
Had to jump in here Dan, as I’ve flown 25K miles on Frontier over the past 12 months.
I agree that during a nationwide weather event like last week’s, Frontier would be one of the last airlines you’d wanna fly.
But, 13/14 Frontier flights I took this year were on time. Not a single one was canceled. I didn’t have a single bad customer service experience.
Flying United this year, 2/3 flights were canceled and rebooked.
Flying American, 2/6 flights were on time.
Maybe I’ve just had really good luck with Frontier this year, but I wanted to throw out those personal data points. Thanks for the post!
Thanks for the data points! We’re planning on flying Frontier CVG-SFO next spring so we’ve got our fingers crossed 🙂
Flown Frontier twice last year, and they’ve both been on time as well, and no issues. Will definitely fly them again – but maybe I’ll skip using them during winter 😉
After achieving Elite tier, and Summit previously, I’d like to know how many Frontier frequent flyers dropped out of the Elite tier, probably like me, because it just isn’t worth sticking with them? Southwest is my new home.
Did you hear how they forgot to load the luggage for an entire flight DEN-CMH on that day? They had no idea where the luggage went to either…
http://myfox28columbus.com/news/local/luggage-missing-for-over-100-passengers-on-frontier-airlines-flight
Hi dan,
I have flown frontier before and once there was a delay of over 4 hours and they offered $100 coupons that I used later on. However the story above is a real horror