By Steve Moran
It feels like Frontier Airlines hires gate agents based on how bad they can possibly be.
Here is just one example.
A man flew from Raleigh-Durham to Boston after a week of business travel. He got to the airport with about 50 minutes to spare. Frontier’s rule is you have to check in 60 minutes before departure or pay a fee to check in at the counter.
He didn’t know he’d missed the window. When he found out, the gate agents told him he’d need to pay $25 to check in. He pushed back. According to his account, the agents piled on, telling him it was his fault for not checking the website, and not in a kind way.
After 20 minutes of arguing, he agreed to pay. As he said it, he muttered that he was never flying this airline again. That’s when it really went sideways. The agents started mocking him, quoting his own words back at him, laughing, pulling out their phones to film him while denying him service. He filmed them right back. The video went viral. Frontier eventually said the two people involved were contractors and are no longer associated with the account.
Watch that video, and you’ll find that it is hard not to feel something close to disgust. Two grown adults, being paid to represent a company, decided the best use of their time was to humiliate a paying customer.
And that’s just one story. There are dozens of them, maybe hundreds: missed weddings, missed funerals, not being in time to say goodbye to a grandmother, grandfather, parent, or child.
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