Starting the generational debt right out the gate for the lil guy.

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They legally need someone in those seats. You also have to be over 18 and speak English. So if no one had paid for them they’d offer them for free around 30 minutes prior to boarding. But you had to be within earshot of the gate attendant and it’s first come first serve.

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As a single guy who travels light, it was pretty nice. Used them a lot in college. A bit older now and make a bit more money so I’m willing to pony up the extra 60 or so for Alaska to avoid getting treated like a thief by the gate agent.

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No, even when you’ve done your due diligence and their own planes have problems, they treat you like absolute dog shit. Rude, horrible gate agents that extract joy from your misery.

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Whats fun is that if you book your flight 0 to 120mins before boarding, they also charge you that fee except its not there at checkout. Wasnt frontier/spirit but another time I bought a ticket 3 hours before and this was the first time Ive done something like that. I didnt know I had to check in still which is just doing all the same shit I just did when buying the ticket the first time. Like no, I didnt somehow find the desire to purchase a seat from when I bought my ticket 1minute ago. And from future experiences, I was able to confirm they dont even email you a reminder to check in if you buy a ticket under 24hours to takeoff. They all only send that reminder at the 24hour mark only. Anyway, the gate agent yelled at me for 15minutes saying stupid things like I'm a dumbass for not checking in and that I cant get on this flight so sorry sir be on your way. And I just calmy told her back that she could let me on (and that I purchased my ticket 3 hours ago) and we both repeated this exchange so many times before she just let me onto the flight. And the dumb thing was once I was at the airport (probably like 50mins before takeoff), I tried to check in to print off my boarding pass and noticed it was giving me an erorr. The kiosk attendant said it was no big deal and they would let me on at the gate. Well they were technically right I guess but sheesh. Didnt get charged any extra though. Was American Airlines.

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I’ve flown them a ton. I had a go wild pass when my dad was dying of cancer and I flew SLC to Chicago almost every other weekend for 9 months. I’ve also used them to see my family on the cheap as well. I had a bag that fit perfectly into their sizer and I got packing cubes to neatly pack my clothes. Didn’t check a bag and wasn’t in a super hurry to get where I was going. If you know what you’re getting going into it. It’s fine. I also usually ended up getting an exit row seat for free since no one pays for shit and I was always at the gate early. Haha.

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The "hate" comes from your carryon/personal item being too big and the gate agent not letting you downsize it (say by throwing something away) because they get commission on every oversize fee. There's video of a gate agent not even letting the person scrunch their bag into the sizing bin. Like the bookbag was half empty but was 1 inch too long when on your back / fully stretched by gravity or a person. Which obviously means it doesnt take up too much space but the agent is just more greedy than the degens here. I've also seen one with a skateboard which also doesnt take up room if you just hold it on your lap which is these people's mindset but is technically too long to fit in the bin. Also could technically fit it into the overhead when no other type of luggage would fit but I get that isnt a reasonable expectation to set. Similar story as earlier except the gate attendant claims *after he broke his board in half* to make it fit that they would have caved and let him on. Y'know, despite insisting he pay the whole time while he gets his phone out to record and then explaining it to his phone then breaking his board. It also means boarding these flights fucking suck as of course most customers experiencing the above are going to throw a fit and cause a delay and there were always multiple per flight if the gate agent did this. Some gate agents gave no fucks and just let everyone board without sizing. Others literally made everyone put their bag into the bin as they walked by. Edit: i relooked up the skateboard incident and while it wasnt tony hawk in the video, tony hawk claims he did the same thing once but the gate attendant still didnt let him take his skateboard on the plane lmao. Not sure if they insisted he pay for it since its essentially like removing an item from a bag to make it fit the bin which the gate attendants didnt let you do (again, depending on how much of a dick they were). Another pro skater, Jon Depoian, claimed it happened to him too but the stopped him before he broke his board and let him go on with it. So I guess the earlier attendant might not have been lying when they said they'd eventually let him bring it on for free 😂 Edit2: damn there's lots of videos of bookbags "not fitting" even though they take up way less volume than the actual limit because obviously shit falls to the bottom which makes it too wide, and the gate agent doesn't let them push it in / guide it in. The advice on reddit is to stick bookbags in upside down so the skinny end goes in first and then all your stuff falls uniformly and wont overflow width/length wide as the bin is now containing the bag. This shit goes way beyond booking a cheap fair and getting a cheap product. Having uncomfortable seats and no snacks is what people expect to be compromising on. People arent expecting to be scammed out of even more money at the gate making the flight more expensive than other airlines.

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Frontier has always been the worst airline in the country as far as I’m concerned. When I used to live in Denver, it was the most god awful piece of shit I ever had to fly, and was far more unreliable than spirit and had the worst human beings working for them. It was like top down laughably evil because every time I flew them the entire line would literally have to argue with the gate agent and record luggage fitting into their box because they’d always try to force you to pay even when you literally bought a dimension compliant bag to fit their personal item requirement. And we all know why that was, since those agents were getting commission for each bag they got gate charged. I wish they’d go up in flames, frontier is the airline that effectively hates their own customers

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Frontier is absolutely worse than spirit. Frontier is absolute shit. Fuck their executives to hell. They make checking in fucking agony (and when you have trouble cuz their shit is ass their gate agents literally look at you like you're a dick garbage human and say "$25 can't help you", fucking bosses told them to do that), their website is shit, and their seats are basically those metal foldable chairs, but worse. I think I would legit prefer to stand. Fuck them.

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