Flying The Clueless Skies...
Written: Dec 24 '00
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Product Rating:
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Pros: Mostly friendly staff, cheap ticket, no first class section, lack of screaming children..
Cons: If you fly through Denver, good luck figuring out what time you're leaving...
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| muttgirl's Full Review: Frontier Airlines |
I’ve spent way too much of my life folded into plane seats built for the vertically challenged. My best-case scenario is getting three seats to myself, and even that’s grim. I wind up origami-ed into fetal position, practically chewing on my knees or contemplating the fact that, on very close inspection, my seven year old boots probably don’t have another winter left in them. On the off chance I fall asleep, I always get whapped in the head or feet by the beverage tray. Will someone please invent an airline for people over 5’8?
This may seem neither here nor there, being too general and all, but it’s a good background for my little bias line: I hate flying. It’s not the scared-of-heights thing or the service but mere claustrophobia and physical discomfort of the whole experience. I’m not holding this against Frontier Airlines, but then again I don’t have to. They screwed up enough on their own.
Two weeks ago I took a trip back east to visit the family. I’d never flown Frontier before, but I wasn’t too concerned about the flight. I had a stopover in Denver, which cheered me considerably. A stopover flight for me is a bonus; it’s like getting a half-hour parole break in a six hour jail sentence.
I was flying from Seattle, and the experience there was unremarkable. I had an e-ticket, and managed to get a boarding pass and check my baggage with no incident. The flight left on time, and the plane was, well, a plane. The only downside was the lack of space for carry-on bags. A sign by the gate said everyone could only carry-on one item. I followed this rule; no one else did. The person in front of me to board the plane had three bags, the guy behind me, two. The woman behind him had at least four and a baby. It seemed everyone but me was carrying their entire life onto the plane with them. Neither the flight attendants nor the gate staff made any attempt to relieve any of these folks of their excess baggage and the plane reflected this. The flight wasn’t even full, but every overhead compartment was stuffed. Had I not had a vacant seat next to me I probably would have wound up sitting on my bag; luckily, I was able to cram it under the vacant seat.
It wasn’t until we got to Denver that things got really fricked up. I got off the plane only to be greeted by the news that my flight to New York was delayed. The gate sign said it would depart at 4:30, (it was supposed to leave at 2) but the gate girl said, “oh, ignore that, it’s not going to leave until 5:30 at the earliest.” Meanwhile, though, all the airport monitors announced it was leaving at 5. Did anybody have any idea what time the plane was leaving? If they did, could they please get everyone together and fix the frickin’ signs? Or at least decide on ONE wrong time to put on everything?
Luckily, I decided to ignore the gate girl, the monitors, and the time posted at the gate and keep checking back every fifteen minutes. It’s a good thing I did, too, as the flight wound up leaving at 5:15, hence making everything wrong. Good job, guys.
A similar incident would occur on the way back. The flight was scheduled to leave Denver at noon. When the flight still hadn’t boarded by 12:05, I asked the gate woman. She swore up and down the plane was leaving on time - does anyone else see the irony in this?. Halfway through her (rather snide) reply to my inquiry, the gate board changed to read 1:00. When I pointed it out to her, she still swore the flight was leaving on time. Why, I wondered, does this airline even bother having gate signs? For the record, the plane left at 2:00, but only after they put us all on the plane and made us sit for an hour while we waited for other flights to come in. Good job again, guys.
Denver seemed to be the black hole for Frontier; all the flights originating from Seattle and New York did fine, but the minute we hit Denver, all bets were off. Signs meant nothing and absolutely nobody had any idea what was leaving when. Perhaps it might be that the Denver airport was designed by a sadist with a well-developed sense of humor. The design, as far as I can tell, resembled a bunch of boxes tied to shoelaces. Everything is way too spread out and traversing the place requires using the internal subway system – slow, cumbersome, and utterly confusing. I could see how working there everyday could stew the brain a bit.
Aside from the Denver Hole Of Doom, Frontier was fine, in a mediocre sort of way. Most of the attendants were friendly, though one of them was getting a little snippy with some of the passengers. “You NEED to put the seatbelt on NOW, sir.” Additionally, one of the gate agents in New York managed to process my entire e-ticket without saying one word to me. She did, however, roll her eyes a few times. Most of the staff, though, was very friendly; even the first clueless gate girl in Denver. The flight attendants didn’t wake me for food or snacks, either – a nice change. I hate when they do that.
Nope, Frontier didn’t kill me. My luggage arrived with me, I didn’t get any food poisoning, and the stewardesses didn’t drop a soda on me. There wasn’t even much turbulence. Would I fly them again? I don’t know. There are some fields in which incompetence is acceptable; flying is not one of them. If these people can’t even figure out what time the plane is leaving (or at least arrive at some sort of consensus on an approximate time) why I should believe they can keep the frickin’ plane in the air in the first place? Flying seems fairly precarious even in the best situations – even more so when most of the staff seems to have absolutely no idea what’s going on.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
muttgirl
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Location: A Damp & Cold Corner Of The World.
Reviews written: 49
Trusted by: 90 members
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