I’m really tired of all of the airline bashing that’s going on these days, almost as tired as I am of hearing about gas prices or anything to do with the election. So, I’m really happy to have this opportunity to pass on some positive information to you guys. Our bankrupt friends at Frontier Airlines, you know – those guys with the crafty pictures of animals on their rear wings, are changing up your inflight dining options with some tasty new choices. Tasty for airline food, anyway.
As of July 1, Frontier will you the option to purchase fresh sandwiches, salads and fruit cups on select Airbus flights provided by Denver-based Udi’s Handcrafted Foods. No, it still isn’t free. But at least it isn’t going to pack on the pounds like standard airline meals.
The sandwiches and salads will be available on day and evening flights to all east coast cities, Anchorage, Costa Rica and Mexico. The sandwiches will cost $6 and the salads will cost $7, which seems a little bass ackwards to me. The fresh fruit cup will be a bargain at $3 and will be available on select flights traveling 540 miles or more outside of Denver. Frontier currently offers a selection of snack mixes from Colorado-based Mountain Man and Udi’s Granola for $3, which will still be available. Wow, Frontier, those are a lot of rules to remember.
“This is just another step Frontier Airlines is taking to give its customers the best travel experience possible,” said Frontier’s Vice President of Infight Services, Cathy Bradley. “Udi’s is a well-known and well-respected Denver-based company that provides a superior product to its customers. These fresh, gourmet sandwich, salad and fruit cup options will be a great addition to the Frontier in-flight experience.”
Frontier recently began offering Rockstar energy drinks in Original and Roasted Latte flavors on all flights for $3. Dasani bottled water will now be available on flights traveling 540 miles or more outside of Denver for $2. I guess you go thirsty on shorter flights.
All food and beverages can be purchased by credit or debit card, which is a huge bonus in my book. Really, who carries cash these days?
Udi’s Handcrafted Foods
We all know who Frontier is, but who is this Udi? Udi’s Foods is a Denver based company that opened its doors in 1994. In a little over a decade, Udi’s has grown to include 6 separate businesses making great food by hand. Those six businesses are a catering business, a bread bakery, a Granola bakery, a pastry bakery, a gluten free bakery and two restaurants, all in the Denver area. So Denverites can feel good about supporting a local business. Udi’s Granola is now available in all 50 states.
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Not only do they hate their customers, but they hate their own employees.
When they say 45 minutes, they mean 45 minutes. They close the flight and put you on standby for the next flight. The lady at the check-in counter was having a bad day already at 6:30AM. She was rude and in a bad mood.
Even though I made it to the gate with 15 minutes before the flight was scheduled to leave, I was denied boarding along with an employee and his family. The employee had some of his family aboard, but the best the gate crew offered was to get a message to them advising that their family had been left behind 15 minutes prior to departure.
The sweaty gate agent’s response was that “he wasn’t going to have a ramp delay”. This tells me that Frontier Airlines has given him improper incentive. Their ‘on-time’ departure, which is often missed (at least 5% of the time), is more important than customer satisfaction. The employee who was left behind was complaining loudly to his family and stated that “Even though I work for Frontier, I never fly them. This is why”. He went on, but I won’t belabor the details here. The gate agents wouldn’t let the employee and his family pass.
As for Frontier Airlines’ gate crew: I can tolerate ignorant people and I can tolerate rude people, combine the two with a dash of apathy and you have a intolerable result.
Frontier Airlines’ customer service is in the red as are their books. It’s too bad that the toxicity is increasing throughout their organization. I used to like Frontier, but I am done with them. I wish I had paid the extra $100 for the United Airlines flight. Even though they’re not perfect, at least they suck less.
The true measure of anything is performance when things go wrong. Frontier fell down this day.
I needed to go to Denver for a job interview and thought I’d use Frontier for the first time, as I’d heard good things about them and I wanted to try them out as a possible secondary carrier in and out of DIA.
I completed my business in Denver and got to the airport at noon the next day with the hope that I’d be able to catch an earlier flight back than the 7PM flight I had booked.
At the counter the agent told me that they had lots of seats available on the next flight out. She also told me that they had a “strict policy of not offering standby seats anymore”. She stated that if I had originally purchased a ticket priced only $20 more, I would not have to pay the $50 additional penalty fee necessary to board an earlier flight.
For those that don’t know, Frontier has 3 tiers of ticket prices (not 3 levels of service though; there is no business class or first class, just three levels of ticket pricing).
I tried to reason with the agent by saying that the flight in on a Tuesday was a $108 fare and the Wednesday flight out was a $333 fare, so there had to be a bit of “wiggle room” built into that $333 fare without her having to charge me any sort of additional surcharge.
She told me that corporate was watching the agents closely for adjustments to tickets without the additional charges, and that they were required to enter a lengthy justification into the computer system whenever the situation warranted a ticket adjustment with no fee being charged.
I asked her if it would not be worth a few minutes of her time to enter in the information in order to save or gain a new customer. She indicated she would not. I asked for a supervisor and she told me that the supervisor was busy and that it might be some time before she could come to the desk. I told her I had 7 hours to wait.
Five minutes later the supervisor came to the ticket counter and I explained the situation again to her. The supervisor told me that she would not be able to assist me. She told me that Wednesday was a heavy travel day for people getting a jump on the weekend. I almost burst out laughing at that one, but I kept my composure as I questioned her about that, and she reaffirmed her statement.
I told her that I was a United Airlines 1K Elite member, and a Southwest Airlines A-List member and that this was the first time I was flying Frontier, and the reason that I had chosen Frontier was that if I accepted the position in Denver I would shift my Southwest business over to Frontier, as Frontier and United are the two dominant carriers at DIA. She reaffirmed that there was nothing that she could (or would) do for me, and that I would not be able to be placed on an earlier departure and would just have to wait in the terminal for 7 hours until my flight took off.
Shortly thereafter, I was at the gate and I asked the gate agent if it would be possible to get on the next departure. He stated that without paying the fee, there would be no way to depart earlier. He indicated that he was “very low on the food chain” and did not have that option available to him. I thanked him for his explanation and concern and called the 800 customer service number.
The person I spoke with at customer service told me the fee was actually $75, not $50, and that the ticket agent and supervisor had misspoken. She reiterated that she would not be able to get me on one of the earlier flights based on my $333 ticket price.
At that point I told the customer service person that I was considering a position as National Sales Manager with a hi-tech company in Denver and that I would be traveling to 6 trade shows, 3 conferences and a few awards shows per year, in addition to regular weekly national travel. Each of these events would require from 3-20 of my staff to travel to these events as well, and I told her that if any staff were to travel with me I would instruct my travel department to never, ever book myself or staff traveling with me on Frontier. She expressed regret, but refused to book my on an earlier flight.
After sitting for a few hours watching the minutes go by, at the adjoining gate I heard a gate agent page for “standby passenger Betty XXX…” I thought that Frontier didn’t have a standby policy, or that’s what I was told just a while ago. Hmmm….
All conversations were conducted in the most professional manner, with no snide comments, raised voice or any other reason for the people I dealt with to be upset with my conduct.
Frontier’s attitude suggests that they think they are the only carrier that people have to choose from; I can assure them that this is not the case. It is hard to imagine that a carrier would have a policy in place that allows (or encourages) the point people working directly with the public to willingly let a potential high revenue customer walk away feeling like they have not been treated fairly. One can only hope that the manager that OK’d this policy will be fired at some point for thinking that the money they make with this policy offsets the loss of customer goodwill. It certainly is short-term thinking and not in the long-term interests of the company.
I’ll stick with United and Southwest, and never again fly Frontier.
Well, guess what, Miss Genius. Southwest will not allow you to travel on an earlier or later flight without payment of the full fare. So, why Frontier’s policy should raise such hackles with you is ridiculous. And, by the way, if you don’t book a “web only” fare on Southwest weeks in advance, you’ll find their fares are considerably higher than Frontier. So are United’s.
Well, guess what, Jeff, that comment was made by a person using the name cabeachguy, not by the author of the post. So your use of “Miss Genius” in your comment makes you look like both a world class idiot and a nasty person. Comments such as those will not be tolerated on this site. I am leaving it up now only as an example of what not to do. You’re welcome to disagree or post your own opinion, but doing so with a negative attitude (especially when misdirected toward me) won’t get you anywhere.
I absolutely will never in my life fly Frontier, not even if it’s free. They have the worst customer service reps, they are rude, mean and talk to people crazy as if Frontier supports their behavior. The supervisor Dan is rude as well as his fellow employees.
I have never flown them and never will I watched what they did to my aunt when I dropped her off to the airport 2 hours prior to the flight, she had an asthma attack at the actuall airport, the reps there told her she should not get on the flight and she needs to be rushed to the hospital and to call Customer service when she gets discharged to reschedule her flight.
That is what we did and when we called back to reschedule the flight the very same day. The rep told us so what she forfitted her flight and nothing can be done. Dan further put notes in the computer flagging my aunts ticket saying she cannot get on the flight unless she buys a whole new ticket (all this in the same day).
Fourtunately at the airport the staff that refuse to let my aunt on the plane due to her Asthma attack, were nice enough to override Dan and reschedule the flight but only stand by.
When I called to speak with Dan to ask him why did he flag my Aunts ticket, the rep told me he works a 9-5 like everone else (exact words) when I asked her why was she telling me that, she said becuase he’s not here.
Never will I fly them and I hope they go out of business.
FYI
Jet Blue is a wonderful airline, AA, Delta and Spirit.
You could not pay me to fly Frontier or US Airways. I refuse to pay money to get treated like crap and on top of that, the flights are always late. Ha they must be psycho, I can’t wait until they go Bankrupt from their rude behavior. I can’t beleive Airtran would degrade themselves to even merge with Frontier.
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