Frontier to charge for carry on luggage
 

Today, a fairly unhappy ticketing agent told me that Frontier was going to start charging for carry on luggage. In fact, he said that they were supposed to be doing it already but that he wasn't going to bother as he was being laid off anyways, and his job being outsourced.

Is there any accuracy to his statements?

While Frontier could be planning to charge (I honestly have no idea if they will or not), keep in mind that 1) The agent was lying when he said he should be charging already, as they do not currently charge for carry-on luggage, 2) If a front line employee heard about it, it would have been posted online somewhere, and 3) The agent is about to lose his job, and may be spreading FUD in retaliation.

I have a feeling that the employee might be getting their information from trickle down affect related to Indigo partners being one of the interested parties.

As some know Indigo bought a major stake of Spirit before they started getting crazy about fees. Indigo also has an investment in Wizz Air which also charges for some carry-on baggage.

Just my two cents.

I'd be pretty surprised if it went that route as any business passengers that maybe loyal to Frontier will jump ship. Companies will reimburse pax for the first checked bag but not carryons, leaving the pax having to foot the bill on that without reimbursement permitted.

On all the major network carriers and Southwest, JetBlue and Virgin, there is no charge for a carry on.

Spirit charges for carry-ons but Spirit doesn't want business pax. It wants Delta and American to charge double for a route like LGA-DTW, while it flies the route under the radar and the legacies don't price match it.

Since Frontier has a DEN hub and might have some business pax in Denver that have chosen to fly Frontier as it's carrier, a fee like this would pretty much wipen their base of business pax there.

I don't think it's ready to go in full leisure mode like Spirit or Allegiant.

There is some accuracy to his statement, he will be laid off and job outsourced. All stations other than DEN will be outsourced. Other than that he's likely full of it.

Why are all the non-DEN folks getting laid off? Will that effect anything from a flyer's perspective?

From what I understand its a cost cutting measure. From a flyer's perspective I don't believe it will effect anything, just different faces doing the same job.

Seriously ugly news...
 

Just received via e-mail, they're going to start charging for carry-on bags (though waived for tickets purchased on their website), plus $1.99 for DRINKS other than water. NO idea how they are going to be able to police the carry-on charges effectively but predict that the drink change is really going to piss people off.

http://media.flyfrontier.com/article...&view_id=1281&

I guess they are taking this Ultra-Low Cost Carrier thing (ULCC) seriously.

A lot of this is inevitable. If you want the lowest possible fares you need to charge for things that make flying people more expensive. Their biggest challenge will be public outreach and keeping their passengers informed.

Looks like Basic fares will now only accumulate 25% of miles flown. I do find it surprising that checking bags will be $25 for the first one (if checking in at the airport) but only $20 for the second. I'm surprised the soda fee isn't waived if you book online, but oh well.

They are pushing more and more to get people to the website and save on GDS fees.

I always buy through Frontier's website. But how would they know if you bought it through another website? So all those deals you find on another website that has you flying to Den (for an example) and flying to your final destination on AA, UA, Alaska, Delta, etc., you would be stuck with a drink and baggage (carry on) fee? Not cool.

I guess this was inevitable, but I was hoping that it wouldn't happen. I guess I can't complain though, who else is going to take me from TTN to MDW for $128RT. Now if they go like spirit and start charging me for using their website, then that will be a step too far. I guess you lose $20M something has to give.

They better not be Spirit. I just want them to have the plan like SW. But not take SW's plan for no assigned seats.

Interesting, if not totally unexpected, stuff. Like previous disincentives to book somewhere other than flyfrontier.com, I wonder how travelers who book through a corporate booking tool or department will fare if they don't have status. It's not uncommon for companies to mandate travel be booked through corporate channels.

Of course beoming an ULCC probably means focusing more on the leisure traveler than the busienss traveler. And some markets like the TTN markets are probably very, very little nonleisure traffic. But a significant portion of their system capacity is in Denver markets with multiple daily flights. And those markets benefit from a mix of business and leisure passengers, especially during times of the year when leisure travel seizes up in most markets. Hopefully these changes do not harm that segement too much.

I definitely understand and agree with the push to have people book at flyfrontier.com. But I wonder if there would be a way to target specific GDS systems like Orbitz, Expedia, Priceline, etc? Perhaps that is not as easily worked.

There's something about how trained people are to recoil at choosing a $290 round trip fare when a $248 fare is also available, even when the $290 fare saves them money overall. Maybe marketing Classic as "supersizing" would make it more palatable?

Or, an option I'd like (if I ruled the world, of course) would be the ability to buy an upgrade after purchase. I got my $248 round trip fare, but now let me pay $30 each way for Classic benefits. That's more reveue than if If I had booked Classic in the first place ($18 round trip) which should more than offset the extra cost to Frontier for booking on a third party site. I don't know how difficult it is to implement, and maybe there's a cutoff so people don't do it at the ticket counter to make their two-checked-bags cost $30 instead of $55. But people don't always make logical purchase decisions, and in some cases may not be able to. Giving them varied opportunities to pay Frontier ancillary revenue makes sense to me. But that might not be a workable plan.

I actually like the idea of charging for carryon bags if, and this is a big IF, it is part of the evolution of bag fees and policies that actually makes sense. I think that the current system just creates a giant clusterf*** of a boarding process. I have always felt that there seems to be some kind of massive disconnect between ticketing and boarding. Doesn't feel like anyone follows the bag policies of one bag and one personal item. Or, they interpret personal item to mean an extra rollerboard or giant backpack. I am not a fan, long-term, of fees for carryon bags. I am a fan of pushing the industry to have a rational bag policy. Start enforcing your own rules and people will adjust and everything will be simpler.