Frontier Airlines Hit With $100 Million Lawsuit Alleging Hidden Fees, False Advertising

Ultra-low-cost carrier Frontier Airlines is facing a fresh $100-million, class-action lawsuit, brought by a passenger who accuses the Denver-based company of false advertising, obscuring its fee structures and other shady practices that “constitute fraud and violate consumer protection laws”.

The 21-page filing was submitted to a U.S. District Court on June 29 by Florida resident Amira Hamad. Her complaint was sparked when Frontier charged her to carry her under-seat personal item into the cabin, which is supposed to be included in the cost of the airfare, and which she says was well within the airline’s stated size allowance.

As do many airlines, Frontier permits passengers to carry on one “personal item” in the cabin fee-free, as long as it measures no more than 14 inches tall, 18 inches wide and eight inches deep, per TSA guidelines. And, like other airlines, agents check that flyers’ items fit these parameters by placing them inside a “bag sizer”—a freestanding compartment that (purportedly) constructed to these measurements.

However, according to Hamad, Frontier used a bag sizer at her gate that was smaller than the advertised allowed dimensions. When she went to board her flight at Orlando Airport, the plaintiff claims that she couldn’t fit her personal item into the sizer provided, even though she knew for a fact that its size was within the given parameters. 

As a result, Hamad was charged a $100 fee for her personal item, which is almost four times the price of checking an actual piece of luggage upon check-in or online. To prove that her bag was within the permitted measurements, upon arriving at her destination, she placed it in a TSA-approved bag sizer present at her arrival airport and it fit inside easily. 

“Notably, Frontier does not identify the dimension of its bag sizer on the actual bag sizer, which, in effect, prevents the consumer from objecting to the bag sizer in-person and allows Frontier to induce the consumer into paying the additional fees under the duress of timely boarding their flight,” the lawsuit reads.

In the filing, Hamad also claims that Frontier does not inform consumers about its hidden fees. Specifically, she cites that the airline does not tell passengers they will be charged nearly quadruple the usual baggage fees if forced to pay for their carry-on items at the gate, instead of in advance.

The plaintiff isn’t alone in feeling that something is off about Frontier’s handling of passengers’ personal items. In fact, it’s an unsettling trend that’s been gaining traction on social media lately, with TikTok videos on the subject going viral.

One user shows how she and a friend’s personal items fit readily into a bag sizer compartment, but they were still made to pay the $100 personal item fee after gate agents claimed they were oversized. Even worse, in a later video, the TikTok-er reveals that they were denied boarding for filming their bags in the measurer, despite having already paid the additional $100.

It also turns out that the carrier actually incentivizes its gate agents to cite passengers’ personal items as being oversize by paying them a bonus for each one they catch during the boarding process. When KRON4 asked Frontier about this policy, Frontier representatives said it is only intended to “incentivize” employees to, “ensure compliance with the bag size requirements to ensure all customers are treated fairly, including the majority who comply with the rules.”

When The Denver Post reached out to Frontier for further information or reaction, an airline spokesperson said only that company is unable to comment on pending litigation.

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