In a viral video, a customer says Frontier Airlines forced nearly a dozen people off of a plane but didn’t tell them their luggage would continue on the journey.
TikTok user Deysha (@mamadee_) posted the video from a Frontier Airlines flight on March 30. She says her flight, originally scheduled for 8:45 p.m., was delayed due to a boarding issue. “I will never fly Frontier again because why are they saying that they need 11 people to get off the flight and take a flight tomorrow night?” she says.
Deysha says passengers were offered a $1,000 voucher for the inconvenience. If no volunteers presented themselves, she says the flight crew stated they would begin randomly picking passengers to deplane. “Reasons why you shouldn’t fly Frontier,” she writes in the text overlay.
The problems don’t end there. The video then cuts to a check-in desk, where another passenger is expressing disbelief that passengers weren’t told that some luggage was being held back due to time constraints. The tense interaction includes the airline employee indicating passengers will be reimbursed for any personal care items purchased while the luggage is in transit.
“Mind you, it is 3:05 a.m. in the morning, and they said that we’re not gonna get our sh*t until [the] next day at night,” she says. In the caption, Deysha writes, “WOW @Frontier Airlines this is wild.”
The video has amassed more than 375,000 views and nearly 900 comments. Viewers expressed frustration with the state of air travel.
@mamadee_ Please watch until the end. WOW @Frontier Airlines this is wild #contentcreator #blackcontentcreator #influencer #blackinfluencer #airlines #travelingnightmare ♬ original sound – Deysha|Content Creator|UGC
One viewer wrote, “Frontier scares me. It’s always some drama and you may not get on when you expect to.”
A second viewer expressed dissatisfaction with the voucher offer. “1k in frontier credit absolutely not,” they wrote.
A third viewer noted, “the fact that they assumed people just have money to just buy all new stuff ….. that’s absolutely insane.”
Another viewer said this worked in their favor once. “I did the voucher thing but it was for Delta and it got me to Singapore. Don’t think frontier can touch that,” they wrote.
In a Quora thread discussing this subject, a former travel agent stated, “It’s rare, but can happen due to weight restrictions on the passenger flight. It’s less chaotic to reroute bags rather than the passengers.”
Travel + Leisure notes that the baggage handling process is lengthy and involves multiple variables, “including the size of the airport and number of passengers — and, therefore, ample opportunity for problems to arise.”
This isn’t the first time Frontier has made headlines for its customer relations and luggage handling. Last month, a customer said a group of passengers was locked outside the gate of an oversold plane—and, to make matters worse, their luggage was inside.
The Daily Dot reached out to Deysha and Frontier Airlines via email for comment.
Update, April 14: Deysha told the Daily Dot via email, “We were told that we wouldn’t get our luggage until the next day at 11pm. Mind you, we are in Puerto Rico in sweat pants and a hoodie. So imagine how hot and uncomfortable we were. There was even another passenger that had a 1 year. I felt bad for the mom because diapers, wipes, bottles etc. They stated that they would reimburse us with the receipts and that there’s a link to do so. From both me and my friend, we print spent 200+ each. This is the kicker, we happened to be in the area the next day at night. My mother was like “I wonder if they would bring it earlier since there’s connecting flights.” I was like no, they stated the late flight. Yet she was right this whole time. We got there around 12am didn’t see our luggage. We go upstairs to ask about them two and the lady said I’m gonna go downstairs and check. So we go downstairs with her and our luggage been sitting in this dark room since 6 PM so to us we were like why didn’t anybody call us. The frontier customer lady responded with “well The travel agents downstairs have three jobs and were understaffed and they’ll get to it when they’ll get to it.” Mind you this was the same lady in the video. And I was like, “but that’s inappropriate because we gave you our number to give us a call as you said you were going to do and you didn’t do such” mind that I could see maybe more than like 15 luggaes in the room. Once we were settled home, when I tried to use the link to get the reimbursement it said that we didn’t qualify to use the link that we had to talk to representative. But the funny thing is that there is no number to talk to a customer service rep with frontier you have to talk to a chat line or on the WhatsApp once I did that with the chat line, they told me that I have to pretty much submit a feedback. Just terrible. I wouldn’t recommend them to anyone. And IF you take this flight, make sure you take A carry on.”
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