Frontier Airlines pays a $10 bonus for every oversized bag that is stopped by gate agents from boarding a flight.
Frontier Airlines Offers $10 Bonus For Every Oversized Bag Stopped By Gate Agents
Yes, Frontier pays a bounty to gate agents who interdict oversized hand baggage that passengers try to sneak onboard. Yes, that means that your chances of slipping something by are even less.
Per a Frontier spokesperson, the bonus is “simply an incentive for our airport customer service agents to help ensure compliance with our policies and that all customers are treated equally.”
The context is Dyana Villa, who shared a viral story on TikTok purportedly showing that her carry-in item clearly fit in the sizer bin, but that gate agents still wanted to charge her extra for it.
@dyanavilla.tv Please make this go viral! The frontier front desk and supervisor were not cooperating with their guest. PLEASE HELP US GET THIS TO FRONTIER! #frontier #viral #flying #flight #carryon #personalitem #frontierairlines ♬ original sound – .
In a follow-up video, she confirms that someone who works for Frontier explained to her that she was stopped because gate agents hav a pecuniary interest in stopping passengers from boarding airplanes with extra carry-on items or items that are too large.
@dyanavilla.tv Replying to @c4re.b3ar_ 10 bucks dude…fr ? #frontierairlines #cancelfrontierairlines #foryoupage #frontier ♬ original sound – .
But Frontier says her videos are smoke and mirrors and that she tried to take a larger second personal item onboard.
The video fails to show that the customer using the sizer box had an additional carry-on bag. Each customer is allowed one free personal item that must fit within the smaller sizer box. This customer had more than one bag and they were not able to combine them into a single bag that fit in the personal item box.
“The second customer’s bag did not fit into the free personal item sizer box without removing much of its contents. Most customers pay for their bags in advance, in accordance with our policies, and we provide multiple reminders and opportunities to do so at a lower price in advance of departure. Allowing these customers to board without paying would be inequitable to every other customer who was already onboard with paid bags.”
Villa claims everything fit in one bag.
CONCLUSION
Now you know you need to bribe a gate agent more than $10 if you want to take your oversized carry-on onbaord!
On a serious note, offering agents an incentive to stop passengers at the gate may rile up a lot of customers, but seems a rather smart method for cutting down on passengers sneaking extra bags or large bags onboard.
image: Reddit
$1o? $5 after taxes. $0 after inflation. Talk about ultra low cost. Do they photograph the bag and enter the dimensions as evidence on the Frontier SharePoint, and then submit the $10 pay adjustment to payroll? Comical.
that is NOT a good thing. Every gate agent is not rational. That ‘bonus” is not aligning compensation and incentives with every day every flight customer service…..be careful for what you wish for, you may actually get it.
Yes, but that’s pretty easily discovered. Most people are generally honest and outliers would show up on data analysis to show shenanigans.
You get what you pay for.
This is one of the many, many, many reasons I refuse to fly budget carriers. The people on legacy carriers are bad enough, but the customers of budget carriers are magnitudes worse. It is not worth it to be stuck on a toilet paper tube for 2-4 hours with these people. Good on frontier for incentiving a main revenue stream of theirs. These are people who can’t really afford to fly and will do anything, and lie about anything to save a buck. It’s slows boarding, and it’s annoying.
Thankfully, my time of flying budget airlines are gone. There are some times it is very tempting to fly them but not for saving money but for convenience. Mainly in Europe, budget airlines fly to some great destinations non stop while main carriers will fly there with connections. For example, I went to a beach location in Italy last summer and I could fly directly from Amsterdam in EasyJet or fly KLM to Milan and from there take ITA to my destination. Well, I preferred to go the longer and more expensive route. The main reason was that KLM and ITA had a few flights a day where EasyJet had only one. If something went wrong with the EasyJet plane I would miss my international connection in Amsterdam on the way back. Also, I didn’t want to check bags since AMS was a disaster last summer and the chances to lose our bags were way too high and EasyJet’s rules for carry on are ridiculous. Thus, I pass on budget airlines. Not worth the hassle to save a few dollars.
Don’t fly these sh#t airlines but I love the idea. I wish the majors would do the same and follow their own rules. Too many people bringing larger than allowed bags and too many bags with them. This slows down boarding, which takes entirely too long already because people move like snails.
Credit to Frontier for incentivizing this for their employees.
Agree on boarding taking too long–and deplaning–flew this week and yes, actual snails. I was in row 4 and row 7 and it still took foreverr to get off the plane due to wheelchairs and overhead bin musical chairs..a mess.
Boarded a plane this morning. Old couple in front of me didn’t request wheel chair and walked when first class was called. They took their time to hold everyone else in the jetway. Got into the plane and they were seated in 1A and 1B. Obviously all the stuff they brought onboard could not stay on their feet. Ohhh, they took their time to store everything on 2 bins. The guy thought he was in a private plane and nobody else needed to board. He took stuff from the bags, stored others than moved more stuff. The FA was watching and rolling her eyes to me until she lost her patience and told him to sit down. Seriously, what’s wrong with people?
The worst!! Why are wheelchairs deplaning first?? The transport staff aren’t always there, or not enough of them, or “we’ll come back to get you”.. I heard one wheelchair employee this week saying to her pax “I can’t take you to the terminal right now. We need to wait here on the jet bridge until the plane is completely empty.” Haven’t heard that one before. Meanwhile 175 people trying to deplane behind them while they tried to get enough wheelchairs and deal with all the chaos. A mess.
And yes, so many people don’t know about things not being able to stay at your feet in the first row.. same thing happened on my flight.. FA told the pax, response: “what do you mean I have to put my stuff up?!?” Needless to say, we were supposed to depart at 8:15pm but were delayed due to the boarding fiasco.
Then it it was the slowest I have ever deplaned and I was only in row 7, so I said loud enough “well, we’re not known for boarding or deplaning quickly, but we’re trying..” Got some laughs from those around me but come on..such a cluster.
It doesn’t work anywhere. I have had arguments with full service carriers who weighted my carry on bag and wanted to charge me because they assumed that I was in economy when I was in business (boarding last as I usually do regardless of travel class) and because they insisted in counting the weight of my CPAP machine within the hand luggage allowance. Needless to say, I was livid on both occasions.
I thought all Frontier employees (with the exception of flight crews and management) are contract employees. Is this still the case also in larger Frontier cities?
Yes, they are all contact employees at the airports. That makes the whole pay an incentive deal challenging since Frontier can’t pay it directly to the agent. Presumably they pay a lump sum to the contract company who is charged with distributing it and billing Frontier. Their contracts are set up such that Frontier doesn’t pay per flight – they pay per labor hour for customer service agents. The contract sets the billing rate by seniority (presumably the pay rate).
I worked for another airline who tried to introduce incentives for airport sales and in some cities the ground handler was losing money on the contract so they kept half the incentive and only paid half out to the employee. You can imagine how that went…
Thanks for the info!
It either fits in the sizer or doesn’t It’s as simple as that. I wish all airlines cracked down on carry-ons.
Bottom of the barrel passengers gonna be fighting bottom of the barrel employees on a bottom of the barrel airline.
Hahaha, yea… poor people are so dumb
Friends used to work for AirTran back in the day whose Business Class was mostly an up sell on coach. The airport agents got commissions on sales (some made upwards of $15-20k a year on them alone) but I would argue that’s a good incentive because it’s improving the experience for the passenger. Non-revs hated it….
What’s messed up is that they dont make it clear that you can’t push the item in. I’ve seen customers myself who’s bags could fit but got stuck part way through due to the friction of the sizer, so they dropped it from a height to get it to go in fully, only for the agent to try to stop them still.
Also in the video, the agent questions why is she bringing on a jacket. Clearly the agent was ready to do almost anything for an extra $10 commission.
Rules are rules, and Frontier is usually upfront about them. But not allowing people to push the bag into the sizer and questioning them about their jacket is very scummy.