What if the first flight delayed and I missed connection?
 

Hi, all, I am kind of nervous when I found out that my partner booked Frontier connecting flights for us. I used Frontier and Spritis multiple times before but never did a connection. The flight is ORD-LAS-PHX. And the layover is 1 hr 36 min and the LAS -PHX flight is the last flight of the day. The next LAS-PHX flight will be 24 hours later.
I am wondering in that case, if the ORD -LAS flight is delayed and I missed our LAS- PHX flight, I believe Frontier will book us to the next LAS-PHX flight which is 24 hours later but that would be a problem for our travel plan. Do you know whether they will cover the lodging cost for the night? If I decide to drive from LAS to PHX, will they cover the rental car cost? If I decided to stop the trip in LAS, can I get my checked bag?

Thanks all! I have been nervous for the past two hours as I found that I will connect flights with Frontier.

Google the Frontier Airlines contract of carriage (you can Google it), and take a look at Paragraph 17C.

If you don't take off on time out of ORD, the first thing you better do while waiting at the departure gate is reserve a room at someplace cheap in Vegas as a plan B. I would not count on Frontier offering you anything and if they do you are ahead of the game. If their late departure is the cause of a missed connection, I suppose they ought to offer you a seat on the next available. Good Luck.

I just looked at that contract of carriage. Force majeure? They can't just say Act of God like everyone else? So if the delay is due to weather or ATC, Frontier has no obligation beyond offering a refund, is how I read it. If they want to be nice they will offer a seat on next available. I wouldn't count on Frontier helping if worse comes to worse, plan on getting home with my back-up plan, and fight it out with them afterwards to be compensated, and not with those worthless vouchers.

Hi, guv1976, thanks! I just read it and I booked refundable rental car from LAS to PHX in things happen.

I'm kind of curious about this, too. I almost never book a connecting flight on Frontier -- as it seems kind of crazy to do so -- but I have a transcon award this summer where I do have to connect. It's almost a 3 hour connection (which I only did because 10,000 miles seemed like a steal for a transcon out of SEA this summer). So we should be fine. But given the way Frontier operates, I could easily envision the nightmare of effectively getting stranded in some random city by missing a connection.

Definitely a lesson learned for me. I don't intend to criticize Frontier since the lack of service makes sense given the low price but feel that it would be better to avoid connecting flights with Frontier given how they operate.

The big problem with Frontier (and Spirit) is that they won't put you on another airline and have thin schedules (e.g. only 2x or 3x weekly for some routes). So that means that even a rebooking could mean delays of more than a day. Frontier's official policy (as per USDOT website) is not to pay for hotels, even if they can't play the weather or ATC cards.

*Maybe* if you're in a city with thin service and stuck, you could get a connecting flight, though that could entail an overnight layover in DEN, MCO, LAS, etc.

And on top of that, is it's a busy period the options to rebook could be totally full and you'd be told you have to go standby. Can happen especially in peak summer months and over Christmas.

BTW, one of the more infuriating delay-causing things that I'm seeing more and more of with Frontier is having to wait on the ramp, sometimes 30-60 minutes, because of an occupied gate. A recent flight I was on that was 45 or so minutes late getting out of the airport had an additional 40 minute delay because the gate at the destination airport was occupied. They had scheduled things so tightly that the occupying aircraft was due in for that time slot and the late-arriving one had to wait.

Imagine having a connection and watching the last hope of making it slip by because they can't pull into the gate.