Complaint Review: Frontier Airlines - Denver CO

My husband & I decided to travel to Lake Tahoe for a three week backpacking trip.  Due to covid, we weighed the pros & cons of driving vs. airtravel.    Frontier had super low fares and advertises enhanced cleaning, hepa filters, temperature checks & a mandatory mask requirement for employees and customers.   Because of this, we decided to fly.

When we got to our gate in Denver, we saw a young lady not wearing a mask.  We figured when she tried to board, they would make her put on her mask.  Nope.  She got her temperature checked by a gate agent and another agent scanned her boarding pass.  She walked onto the plane without her mask.

On the plane, she walked by 3 flight attendents and no one said anything to her about putting her mask on.  She ended up in our row seated in the window seat next to my husband.  She did put on her mask before we took off, but 15-20 minutes into the flight, she took her mask off for good.

My husband flew the entire way sitting sideways so she wouldn't talk to him and breathe in his face.  The woman was from Florida, a covid hotspot at the time, visiting her family in Reno.  She talked almost the entire flight.  

The flight attendants stopped several times to speak to her directly.  There was no way they could not have noticed she wasn't wearing her mask as they were looking her directly in the face, but they never said a word.  My husband caught the flight attendants attention and kept pointing to his mask, but they just turned around and walked away.  During the descent, it was pretty turbulent.  She was yelling and laughing ... all the things that spread covid.

Right before landing, my husband went to the bathroom and saw there were 3 empty rows in the back of the plane.  The flight attendants should have moved her or us.  

Yes, we should have done more at the time and advocated for ourselves, but we didn't want cause a scene and frankly, we didn't feel it was our responsibility to police Frontier's own policies.

When we got to our hotel room, I immediately called customer service to cancel our return flight and asked for a refund.  They advertised something they did not provide and I didn't feel safe flying on their airline.  The customer service agent apologized and said they would pass our experience on to the leadership team for a learning experience.  She said if we want to cancel, they would give us a flight credit that was good for 90 days.

Gee .. thanks.  You endanger my family by not following through with your own advertised promises.  We are cancelling our flight because of your own negligence and you think we want to fly with you again?

I called back trying to get someone not in an Indian call center.  They refused to let me speak to a supervisor.  All we wanted was our return portion refunded so we could book another flight on an airline that was going to deliver what was promised.  They wouldn't even refund my prepurchased baggage.

We ended up flying home on United.  Their gate agent told us they had kicked 5 people off the plane a few days previously for not wearing masks.  united handed out antibacterial wipes 2x during the flight - upon boarding and during the snack. (Which Frontier discontinued for safety reasons .... I would think handing out snacks is a safer than having a person from Florida not wearing a mask on your plane).

I will never fly Frontier again.  It was a crappy airline before covid, and it's a crappier airline after covid.