Looking back, I should've taken Frontier as an omen.
This trip was for my aunt's birthday cruise aboard Norwegian Prima, and somehow the vacation started unraveling before I even made it to Orlando.
I'll be transparent: I was late to my original flight. That part is true. It wasn't because I overslept or mismanaged my time, but because someone else's delay caused us to arrive later than planned. I'm not asking Frontier to ignore their policies or hold an airplane for me.
What I am asking for is consistency.
Instead, I got conflicting information from nearly every person I spoke with.
The Frontier ticket counter told me one thing.
The customer service phone agents told me something else.
Another customer service representative contradicted the previous one.
Then I'd finally make it back to the front of the line, only to be told something completely different again.
At one point, I literally made the desk agent read every note from my previous phone conversations because somewhere between the call center and the airport counter, the message kept getting lost in translation. I wasn't even able to have the phone representative speak directly with the desk agent, so I became the middleman, bouncing back and forth between the counter and customer service like I was negotiating an international peace treaty instead of trying to catch a flight to Orlando.
The most frustrating part involved checked baggage.
We had an email stating one deadline.
The airport staff cited another.
We were told checked bags had to be there by a certain cutoff, despite us arriving within what we believed was the required window based on Frontier's own communication. By the time we reached the counter, we were simply told the window had already closed.
Maybe that's the policy.
Fine.
But if that's the policy, then every Frontier employee should be explaining the same policy the same way.
That wasn't happening.
In the end, there were no exceptions.
No flexibility.
No meaningful attempt to help.
Just a $261 one-way rebooking fee to move me from my original noon-ish departure to an evening flight around 7:30 p.m.
So instead of starting my vacation, I got to spend most of the day sitting in Detroit Metro Airport.
The irony?
I paid for TSA PreCheck, and by the time all this unfolded, it didn't even matter. I breezed through security only to spend the next several hours sitting in the terminal wondering why I'd bothered paying for expedited screening in the first place.
To make matters even more interesting, we later found out someone else in our travel group, traveling separately, also experienced issues with Frontier that delayed them until later in the day.
Maybe it was bad luck.
Maybe that's just how Frontier operates.
Either way, it didn't inspire confidence.
The actual flight itself was...fine. It got me to Orlando safely, and I'll gladly give credit where it's due. Once I was finally on the plane, there wasn't much to complain about.
The problem wasn't the flying.
The problem was everything required to get onto the airplane.
Frontier seems to operate under the same à la carte philosophy as Norwegian Cruise Line: charge separately for everything while making the rules feel like they're changing depending on which employee you ask.
Policies are policies. I understand that.
But inconsistent communication is not a policy, it's a customer service failure.
If you're going to tell customers "no," at least have everyone telling them the same "no."
Unfortunately, because this was a round-trip ticket, I still have to fly Frontier home unless I want to eat the cost and book another airline.
But once this trip is over, I can confidently say this:
If Frontier is my only option in the future, it had better be because every other airline has disappeared from the departure board.
Otherwise, I'll happily pay more to avoid repeating this experience.
By the time I finally landed in Orlando, I thought the hard part of my vacation was behind me.
Little did I know, Frontier was just the opening act. Norwegian, Lyft, and Local Rides were waiting to headline the rest of the week.
As I'm writing this review, I literally just checked in for my return flight and paid to upgrade my seat. Why? Because after this week, I'm going to be comfortable going home after all this bullsh!t. Frontier already got another few dollars out of me, but at least this time I know exactly what I'm paying for. If the seat reclines and lands in Detroit, it'll probably end up being the best value purchase of my entire vacation. read more