Thanks again for the reports...
Originally Posted by
stockholm28
1) The flight was overbooked by 4 seats. They asked for volunteers who would get $200 if they took a flight routed through Omaha. Evidently both afternoon flights to DC were overbooked. That seemed unusual.
Frontier is generally middle-of-the-pack agressive with overbooking, but for whatever reason they don't historically get enough volunteers to avoid the dreaded involuntary bump. The DoT doesn't count voluntary bumps against carriers, only involuntary ones. So perhaps they are being more aggressive in getting volunteers to avoid bumps.
Q2 stats for Frontier
#8 of 18 carriers for total denied boarding
#6 of 18 carriers for voluntary denied boarding
#17 of 18 carriers for involuntary denied boarding
Even that dismal involuntary ranking is only around 8 per day, but it's a big number relatively speaking. Compare their numbers to AirTran,which has far more denied boarding but nearly always finds volunteers. For the same period:
F9
32 total bumped passengers per day, 8 of which were involuntary (25%) That put Frontier #17 of 18 for involuntary bumps, the stat which counts. The moderately low level of total denied boarding doesn't.
FL
182 total bumped passengers per day, 4 of which were involuntary (2%). That put AirTran #4 of 18 for involuntary bumps, the stat which counts. The high level of total denied boarding (more than double what nearly every other mainline carrier bumps) is not a reported stat.
Overbooking in general causes hassles and delays, and some people are just as critical of either kind. But when you don't get enough volunteers, forcing someone to take a bump is bad. If they are more active on looking for and compensating volunteers, that can help. I was bumped once involuntarily simply because there was no seat to reserve when I booked, so when I came to check in they said "well sir, you don't have a seat so if everybody shows up you'll be bumped" (which I was) without asking for volunteers. I was apparently the last person who booked...at a high fare for squeezing on what I did not know to be a full plane...and was the one left behind. I'm not sure if that was still happening in more recent times, but it smacked of gate agent indifference and led to an involuntary bump when there might have been a volunteer.
Originally Posted by
stockholm28
2) My flight was delayed 2 hours due to a mechanical problem with the door. However, they gave everyone a $100 credit voucher for Frontier. That was certainly a nice surprise.
That was a nice gesture -- one which can take the edge off of a bad situation.
Originally Posted by
stockholm28
3) The exterior of the plane was still Midwest blue but the interior had been refitted with the green Frontier seats including the stretch seating at the front (it looked like first 4 rows had stretch).
Was this your first E170 flight with the new interior? I have two E170 trips in the next 10 days or so and am hopeful to get at least one with Stretch.
The existing E170 seats were most or all of the style with the rounded profile at the headrest. Do you remember if that style is being used on the new interior? Those seats feel okay but always look cheap to me.
Originally Posted by
stockholm28
4) Finally, I've flown this route twice in the last 3 weeks and both times they have given out only one cookie. I heard the flight attendent say "we're down to one cookie now" a couple of weeks ago, but thought she just meant that particular flight. I'm guessing the cookie quota has changed.
I've heard discussed elsewhere that catering is now 1 cookie per seat to make sure everybody can get one but avoid waste. I've heard the cookie uptake is not so good on the legacy Frontier routes and waste is high. I think that is largely due both to unfamiliarity and the cookies being cold. If you know you're getting cookies on the plane you might skip the temptation to buy some junk food when you pick up a newspaper. And the cold cookie...well...we've talked about that more than once.
A tweet several days ago suggested that cold cookies are due to ovens not being systemwide yet but it will change. I hope that proves true.