Is this what airline travel is these days?

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

My mother told me she just got done submitting a complaint about the airline we flew on for our vacation (Frontier, if anybody needs to know. Flying out of Milwaukee, them and Southwest are pretty much the only choices). I agree with a lot of it, but am also wondering if she's being a bit too entitled.

She booked our tickets through a third-party site (Orbitz, I think) in February. She selected three seats right next to each other for all our flights (four in total, Milwaukee to Denver, Denver to Salt Lake City, and back again.) When we got to the airport for our flight to Denver we found we had split up on both flights to Salt Lake City. Mom complained and the counter lady did get us seated next to each other on both legs of our flight out, but she also acted as if she was doing us a favor we weren't entitled to, because we had purchased discount tickets or some such thing.

We also noticed in-flight snacks, small bags of animal crackers or Goldfish cracker, being given out only to certain passengers. The flight attendants even were reading off a chart to figure out who should get the snack and who shouldn't. We didn't get any snacks. This wasn't a big deal, since we generally bring our own munchies onto the plane, but it does reek of cheapness.

Frontier is also one of those airlines that charges for checked baggage. This resulted in people lugging bigger suitcase-type bags onto the plane, stuffing them in the overhead bins, and then holding people up getting off the plane because they have to wait until the last minute to get their bags. We never use the overhead bins anyway, but we had a couple tight connections and if the planes had been late into the airport, we could've missed our connections. The airline boards the planes by zones--their "premium members" first, people with small children, people needing assistance getting up the jetway, and then zones 1,2 and 3 as indicated on your ticket. Yet getting off the plane is a free-for-all. I've never understood why the airlines can't bring some order to that process.

These are probably small things; none of our planes crashed, our luggage didn't get lost. My mom is swearing off Frontier for good, and I'm none to pleased with them either.

But if we flew Southwest, would it be any better? At least they aren't currently charging for checked bags.

I dunno. I hesitated to write this because I do understand it's hard to run an airline these days, and Frontier positions themselves as a budget airline anyway. I'm just wondering if the experience would be any different on any other airline in the future.

[Mel]

I've flown with budget airlines in the past (well pretty much every time I've flown which was only a few times), and I go in not expecting much. We've always gotten at least a snack (unless it was very short flight, around an hour), or a meal.

[Raveni]

How do you define better? No charge for checked bags, but open seating upsets some people. Personally, I like it because I can choose who I want to snore on sit next to. I guess that it would be not so good if I was travelling with my whole family and wanted us all to sit together.

I think they board you in zones too, but simply printing your boarding pass early guarantees you'll go on with the second group at the worst.

[auntiem]

Part of the issues is booking thru a third party - not that there is anything wrong with it, but if you check fares on kayak - they send you thru to the airline's actual site where you get more specific info.
I'm not a travel agent anymore, I know some things have changed - but some things never do. This is what I think may have happened:

1) the seat issue - that sounded odd to me, but when I checked Frontier's site - there seems that there are different seating available depending on the fare paid - so the check in person may well have put you in "premium" seats that your fare wasn't technically eligible for. British Airways does this kind of seating too. The original change is seating arrangements may have been due to a change in equipment - that happens often (don't remember if Frontier has multiple types of equipment though).

2) Snacks - maybe snacks aren't available for the fare you paid? That seems particularly cheep on the airline's part.

3) The overhead bags and the getting off the plane - sadly, that kind of selfish passenger behavior has been around for ages on every airline I've ever flown on.

4)Boarding method - most airlines have their own way to do it but they are all similar to Frontier's method.

[csquared]

All the airlines are cutting back on everything. The snacks being one of the items. Some airlines are even selling snacks. Frontier is obviously providing snacks to premium customers.

I would double check your information from Orbitz and see if they actually guaranteed your seating selection or just asked for a seating preference. I would talk to Orbitz before complaining to Frontier. Although, I would not be surprised if Frontier gave your seats out to a preferred customer. Frequent fliers are their bread and butter.

I would write it off as "you got what you paid for."

[Jester]

She selected three seats right next to each other for all our flights (four in total, Milwaukee to Denver, Denver to Salt Lake City, and back again.) When we got to the airport for our flight to Denver we found we had split up on both flights to Salt Lake City.

I have booked many (most) of my flights in my life with third party websites, and I could swear that whenever I preselect my seats (which I always do), it has some disclaimer saying that these are merely "requests," and that the site cannot guarantee those particular seats. Of course, I could be wrong, but that is how I remember it.

We also noticed in-flight snacks, small bags of animal crackers or Goldfish cracker, being given out only to certain passengers.

It is possible that those people either pre-purchased their snacks or received bonuses for frequent flierage. Either way, seems rather cheap to me, but I've never flown Frontier, so I can't comment either way.

I AM flying Southwest for the first time in over 20 years, so I will report back to this site on how my experience is.

[Irving Patrick Freleigh]

I would write it off as "you got what you paid for."

I'm kind of figuring as much.

My mom can get a bit entitled at times. That's why she's submitting the formal complaint and I'm not.

[MoonCat]

I haven't flown in a long time, but from what I remember, the main reason boarding (or deboarding) is a free-for-all is that half the passengers are idiots who keep going back up and then back down the aisle, multiple times, getting in the way of passengers who are just trying to either get to their seats or get to the door.

Where the hell these idiots think they're going is a puzzle. Go to your seat, stash your carry-on and sit yer ass down! And stay there! It's not that hard!

[Chromatix]

The experience you get definitely varies by airline quite a lot. Airport security and weather resistance is a universal crapshoot, but nearly everything else is under airline control.

Over here in Europe, I usually fly SAS, effectively a joint flag carrier of Denmark, Sweden and Norway together. Despite being a flag carrier, they are relatively inexpensive - and this translates into snacks and meals being charged for on board (but at prices no higher than on the street in Helsinki). And yet because they are a flag carrier, everything else that really matters is top-notch.

On a normal flight, a reasonable hold luggage allowance is included for each ticket. Bags larger than would easily fit overhead or under seats are not allowed in the cabin. Boarding is in the usual manner according to row number (although there are more efficient ways possible), and disembarking seems to proceed smoothly without explicit organisation.

The real quality of an airline shows when things go wrong. So when Manchester Airport was effectively shut down by snow, SAS did everything in their power to get people who were booked and had arrived for check-in on time to their destinations - using rerouteing and overnight stays at their own hotel chain to cover for cancelled flights - while budget airlines simply issued booking cancellations whenever possible. The SAS rep who processed my reroute mentioned that they were getting a lot of enquiries from ex-EasyJet customers. Due to the long wait for very scarce runway slots, they also eventually issued meal vouchers for the airport restaurants, and when the aircraft finally arrived, they took the unusual step of refuelling it while boarding to speed things up (requiring passengers to *not* put their seatbelts on).

By contrast, the true budget airlines over here are extremely stingy. Expect to pay extra for even one piece of hold luggage, to depart from a smaller, less convenient airport, to wait in a long queue for understaffed check-in desks, and to receive virtually no sympathy when things go wrong for no fault of your own. On one occasion I arrived 2.5 hours before takeoff, yet by the time I got to the gate the aircraft had already left - and was expected to buy a fresh ticket for the next available flight and go through the whole process again. So that's an airline I now actively avoid.

[Kogarashi]

I'd hazard to guess that at least some of your experience is due to Frontier, not the discount tickets.

I recently booked a trip on Delta via Orbitz, and on four legs my seats weren't shuffled around. They didn't hand out snacks only to certain passengers, and deboarding the plain was relatively organized (front-to-back, but everyone got off smoothly).

My family flies Southwest a lot, and I feel at least somewhat confident in saying that you might have a better experience with them, given the issues with your Frontier flights. The pick-your-own seating means you can snag a seat closer to the front if you want and if it's available (meaning you can get off the plane faster), they hand out snacks to everyone, and as you said they don't charge for checked baggage. There's no in-flight entertainment last I checked, but that's what books and ipods are for.

My Hubby's family, on the other hand, flies American a lot (AAdvantage card + dental practice = lots of airline miles), and while I haven't had awful service with them, it's a bit annoying to see first class getting super-fancy snacks while coach gets a drink and the option of buying snacks. Not even a cheapo pouch of peanuts or pretzels for us lowly coach passengers. It probably wouldn't bug me so much if it weren't for the fact that I've been on several other airlines that don't charge for snacks, or only charge for the fancy stuff but have a free option too (Southwest and, last I checked, Jet Blue give out the fancy stuff for free, and Delta's snacks weren't too shabby either and also free unless you wanted the fancy stuff). American also charges for checked baggage with some exceptions that Hubby and I don't meet.

So it's really dependant on airline. I probably would complain about the issue deboarding and the elitism caused by handing out snacks only to people on a list rather than everyone in the section. The seating I wouldn't complain about unless I had guaranteed seeting on my reservation confirmation and that changed at the airport. I'd check that first.

My MIL had a seat switcheroo problem once. The way the seats rearranged, their youngest child was left all by herself at the far end of the plane from everyone else, and they couldn't just shuffle around who was sitting where because of exit rows or something like that. MIL talked to the ticketing agent to try to get the seats rearranged and was told "there's nothing we can do" with a bit of an attitude. So MIL countered, "Okay, do you want to tell the flight attendant to sit back there with my 6-year-old child?" and gave her a pointed look. The ticketing agent got an look on her face and immediatly changed her tune to "let me get that fixed for you."

[Sandman]

You would have a much better experience with SW. I flew out to California from the east coast with my now wife (fiancee then) and while I had a couple of bumps in service, SW immediately fessed up to it being their screw up (losing a bunch of luggage when someone in Albany put it on the wrong Sacramento flight (three flights originating from Albany with a leg in Sacramento), got it around midnight Cali time.

The second time was leaving California. One of our bags got damaged when they were loading it into the airplane (they immediately paged me up to the gate). They gave my wife and I priority boarding (kinda a "sorry we screwed up") and let Albany know that there will need to be a bag claim made.

Additionally, there was a bit of a delay leaving California causing many people to arrive late to their connecting flights. All those flights were being held for us (which was nice).

When we got to Albany and spoke to the baggage claim rep., he thought we would be screaming. We were actually happy that they stepped up and admitted it was their fault. The guy grabbed his manager to have us tell him the story (as were weren't screaming, but giving a complement on how they stepped up and admitted fault).

[Bella_Vixen]

Bring back Midwest Express!!!!!!!!!



Free cookies rocked!

[tropicsgoddess]

I'm not much of a flier and the last time I flew anywhere was in 2004 to Puerto Rico for vacation (on Pan Am). The suckiest ordeal was the constant delays when we were departing from Puerto Rico and going back to Florida. Originally the flight was supposed to leave at 2pm, then it kept getting pushed back so much that it wasn't till about almost midnight that the flight was finally ready to go (no word exactly why the flight was pushed back so many times). My mom and my sister's (now ex) bf's mom weren't too happy about that and complained about it. From what I've heard SW seems to be good and Jet Blue kinda shitty. According to my FMIL Delta is one of the best (she's always had good experiences with them).

[lordlundar]

And yet funny enough here in Canada our budget airline (WestJet) is constantly outperforming the national airline (Air Canada) since they came into existence. Of course the competition prior to it (Canadian) was also outperforming them and they got bought out by them.

[Greenday]

Airlines I've flown on within the past year or so:

Delta: Most of my flights have been with them. As a result, I do Skymiles with them. They give out free snacks and meals. Movies/TV shows are free if it's a longer flight and the plane has them. I can change my seat at will online.
Continental: The suckiest. They charge for everything possible. And it's all grossly overpriced.
Royal Dutch Airlines: My favorite so far. Seats were comfy, plenty of space. Food was good. Snacks. Nicest flight I've ever had.
Air New Zealand: I enjoyed my flight with them. And that matters on those 13 hour flights. Good food, good service.
Emirates: Not bad. Really no complaints about them either.

Basically, don't fly Continental ever.