Have you ever had a difficult travel, or flying, experience? I can honestly say with the many, many trips we have taken, we have not had an issue.... until now. And now that we have the issue, I understand why people become so upset and disappointed in the airlines.
For the past two years, we have have been budgeting and planning to take a family trip (my husband, my daughter, her husband and two kids) to Disney World. We use the credit card that will give us the best payback and we have saved our points to make this happen. On October 18, 2017, we used our points to purchase flights for all of us using our rewards. Our daughter and her family were bought tickets on Frontier Airlines and my husband and I are flying with Southwest and American Airlines. We had chose these flights based on the best value. I was always leery of the "no frills" airlines such as Frontier but decided, what the heck, let's give them a chance.
Fast forward to February 6, 2018. Our daughter and her husband opted to add a checked bag to their flight. When they went online to do so, they found that their flight had been changed without their knowledge. They were scheduled for an 11 a.m. non-stop departure out of Minneapolis. This was the best time because of traveling with a 6-year-old and 8-year-old and we are an hour and a half from the airport. Their flight was changed to a 5:30 a.m. departure with 2 layovers resulting in a 12 hour flight. Frontier says they have sent an email notifying them of the change. There have been no emails received other than a $75 voucher after the phone call to question this. Yes, they were offered choices. They could depart the night before at 6 p.m. and travel what would end up being a red eye with their young children or they could change their destination to Tampa, rent a car and drive 1 1/2-2 hours to Orlando. These options would involve added expenses such as an extra night of hotel and food and/or a rental car and they would arrive with tired children starting their trip off on the wrong foot. The other option is to be refunded and find another airline. OK....this trip is 6 days away. That is not even a financially logical option. So in the end, saving our rewards to purchase our tickets are costing MORE money than if we just bought the tickets. Not to mention that we are out the money we paid to have the Disney shuttle pick us up at the airport and take us to the hotel with no worries.
My husband and I have checked our flights on Southwest and American Airlines. There are no issues with our flights. Why is it that Frontier has a problem with customer service and can't follow through with what we purchased. If we wanted a layover or a red-eye flight, we would have bought that. If we wanted to fly to Tampa and go on a road trip, we would have bought those tickets. In the end, we have spent our rewards to have a tired and disgruntled family to start out a trip. How can this be considered ok and quality customer service? Froniter Airlines...how do you sleep at night???
