Frontier Airlines

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This was my first time flying with Frontier Airlines. I signed up for email distribution list on their website (www.flyfrontier.com) and in January received notification about a 2 day sale with $49 fares. I live in Houston, TX and they had 3 destinations from my departure city for this price - Phoenix (AZ), Denver (CO) and San Francisco (CA) with multiple dates from February through May. My husband and I quickly decided that we wanted to check out San Francisco and I searched for 2 tickets: although some dates were excluded (if I am not mistaken, blackout dates applied in March during Spring Break and some weekends had slightly higher prices), I was able to find 2 nonstop flights for $49 each way leaving Houston on Saturday morning and coming back on Wednesday afternoon in April. You have to be pretty flexible to be able to take advantage of this type of sales so just in case I purchased insurance for $10 (we didn’t end up using it so I don’t have much to say about it).

I noticed that one of the biggest complaints about Frontier Airlines is their hidden fees, so I will list all of them here (at least the ones I know of or experienced).

Once I found dates that worked for us, it gave me an option to pick seats for $3 per person (each way). Paying $3 while I was buying $49 tickets with Frontier was still a steal so I picked our seats and booked the reservation. While paying extra for seats is not necessary, you might want to do it If you don't want to be separated from your party which may happen when you get assigned seating before your flight. If you decide to reserve seats last minute, the price will go up to $15 per person per flight. Although this is inconvenient, most of the budget airlines practice this (Spirit Airlines, Southwest Airlines, etc.) However, unlike Southwest Airlines your bags don't fly free with Frontier, not even carry on bags (unless it's a laptop or a purse). You can pay for bags right away or later when you check in, the price is the same: $30 for carry on or $25 for check-in bag (you can get $5 off if you pay online). I picked check-in option since it was cheaper than carry on and allowed a larger size suitcase with 50 lbs weight limit. Warning: make sure your check-in luggage doesn’t exceed 51 lbs, penaty for overweight is $75 (!).

The plane itself was pretty good (Airbus), there were no problems during the flight, both times we arrived 15-20 minutes early. If you want to watch tv – you have to pay $5.99 flat fee for the entire flight period (3 hour flight from Houston to SF), if you want a soda or snacks, you also have to pay for those. In the end, I think it was totally worth the money. When you fly with this type of budget airlines you have to have reasonable expectations. As long they have safe planes and experienced pilots, I am totally flying with Frontier again.

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Photos

FrontierAirlines
Arriving to San Francisco