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A poster on Reddit is sharing the ridiculous way that his girlfriend was treated by Frontier Airlines on Saturday when she was attempting to fly from Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport (ATL) to Denver International Airport (DEN) for a wedding. According to the post, Frontier involuntarily denied her boarding, provided no compensation, and then threatened to have her arrested.
Girlfriend was removed under threat of arrest from an overbooked Frontier flight 1449 from ATL-DEN after having already boarded.
byu/Lightsword infrontierairlines
Frontier flight F9 1449 departed around 40 minutes late on Saturday night (without the Redditor’s girlfriend). She had already boarded when she was informed that her seat was needed and that she would need to deplane. She left the flight and the situation after is described as follows:
The gate staff then essentially just laughed at her and refused to re-book her at all on any flight that would arrive before the wedding, they also refused to provide any hotels or compensation. Frontier’s chat support was also less than useless as usual.”
There are several updates including that the original poster met someone at the wedding that his girlfriend missed. This person told him that she was on the same flight and witnessed what happened. Several crew members needed seats, so Frontier boarded them. They needed one seat, chose her, and that was it. Even when another passenger who had bought a second seat for her infant agreed to hold the baby and give her the seat, Frontier allegedly refused.
This is all based on a post on Reddit, so there is no real way to verify many of the details. If what the poster said is true, then Frontier did something that it’s not allowed to do when overbooked. The US Department of Transportation (DOT) is clear that once a passenger is boarded that they cannot be removed (unless they have caused an issue, which is not the case here). This reads:
When an airlines determines that one or more passengers will be involuntarily bumped because the flight is oversold, the airline generally selects those passengers at the gate area before those passengers are accepted for boarding and allowed to board the flight. Once a passenger has been accepted for boarding or has already boarded the flight, airlines are not permitted to require that passenger deplane, unless the removal of the passenger is required by safety, security, or health reasons, or the removal is due to the passenger’s unlawful behavior.”
This situation is reminiscent of what happened on a United flight back in April 2017 at Chicago O’Hare International Airport (ORD). Dr. David Dao was selected to be involuntarily removed from the aircraft to allow crew to take his seat. He refused and ended up being beaten up and bloodied as he was dragged off of the aircraft. Thankfully, this situation did not get physical.
Anthony’s Take: Frontier has some explaining to do and owes this woman compensation. I hope that she escalates it and gets what she deserves. Frontier was in the midst of the IT shutdown like all other carriers, but that is no excuse for its behavior here.
(Featured Image Credit: S31lqanm.)
(H/T: Paddle Your Own Kanoo.)
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Advertiser & Editorial Disclosure: The Bulkhead Seat earns an affiliate commission for anyone approved through the links above This compensation may impact how and where links appear on this site. We work to provide the best publicly available offers to our readers. We frequently update them, but this site does not include all available offers. Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed, or approved by any of these entities.
