Fair weather friend, falls apart too easily
Written: Jan 03 '08 (Updated Jan 21 '08)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Airplanes equipped OK.
Cons: Unprofessional in training and practice. They make chaos and then cannot deal with it.
The Bottom Line: Use Frontier with great caution, they abandon you when things get outside their routine.
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| curmudgeon44's Full Review: Frontier Airlines |
Flying Frontier ruined our trip. I hope to NEVER fly them again. Lots of people seem to have decent experience with Frontier, and their planes seem OK. But if conditions make their job just a little bit difficult, and watch them utterly fail to do their job!
Our trip was under conditions that would stress a normal airline, but a normal airline would beef up their efforts and work smart in order to maintain their service. Our flight was scheduled to depart 10:30am January 1, 2008, and in prior days winter storms had affected travelers in other cities -- this day Denver was drivable and flyable and there was an extra load of ski vacationers trying to scrounge flights. Now an intelligent airline would have known about the weather issues and had staff working to process a higher than average number of would-be customers.
Not Frontier, they had very *few* people working when we showed up, and lots of empty computer terminals. You know how people with baggage go through a labyrinth before actually getting close to a service agent? Well the Frontier line extended that far and way past, it was close to the length of TWO FOOTBALL FIELDS (200 paces). Yet at this time it was only a Frontier problem, other airlines were prepared to work extra and had people on duty. We watched as our line stopped moving when the service agent wordlessly walked away from her station and did not return. You could tell the agents themselves knew they were trying to make do with too few people. Maybe they were up late partying the night before. Maybe they were hung over and called in sick. My point is every airline has the same weather and people, and Frontier failed when others were doing OK.
We were told our flight could not be made, after waiting in line 70 minutes (other reviews have talked about excessively long waits in line for Frontier). This was a lie because our flight actually was delayed 40 minutes, Homeland Security was moving along well and we could have made it had they accepted our bags. They said to come back at 11:00am when lines should be shorter (they really were little improved), and we could have standby status for the 3:30pm flight.
At the 11:00 second try to check our baggage, we had a 40-minute wait and saw a service agent exclaim in exasperation, "Where are the OTHER Service Agents?" to anyone who would listen. Our first agent had given us a gate pass which looked valid, but failed to include us in the computer system -- the computer officially thought we just never showed up. The effect of this error would be to put us in the standby queue at 11:40-11:50, not at 10:30. This could well have been the reason we could not get on the 3:30 flight. Again Frontier failed to follow their own procedures correctly, making chaos and extra work for everyone.
At 2:00 for the 3:30 flight check-in, a service agent told us it was a waste of time to even wait for boarding, and the evening flight was impossible too. But... it was impossible he said to get our bags back to us. So we had the necessity of spending the night in a hotel, and choosing between sleeping in our clothes or sleeping naked. I blame Frontier's crappy customer service in the first stage of check-in, for starting a chain of events they think of as an 'act of nature'. If Frontier took a professional attitude toward staffing, they would not be so hit-and-miss as to results for their customers.
We spoke with several Frontier employees who seemed to want to do the right thing, but their company doesn't support them so they can be professional. Instead they are abandoned by their own company to make excuses, false promises, and as I read in some reviews, occasional outright lies to cover up their mess. These same employees if working for a professionally managed airline such as Southwest or Continental would perform fine.
This has been the worst flying experience in my life. I hope to never fly Frontier again.
P.S. 1/8/2008 - Have been trying to talk about this to a Frontier Customer Service rep, but he cannot "download" company info for any part of January yet. IMO this is another example of the company having weak, ineffective business systems if a rep cannot discuss something that happened recently.
P.S. 1/21/2008 - That customer service rep said he would call me back as soon as he could "download" Frontier's data but he did not as of 1/17/08 so I called him. He claims his company's line was moving well, he ignored any other points I had made, and made some kind of offer of a coupon. Even with a coupon I hope to never fly Frontier again unless it is the only carrier available.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
curmudgeon44
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Reviews written: 3
Trusted by: 0 members
About Me:
Born 1953, married 25 years, one child.
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