Frontier Airlines has been accused of booting a medical student from a flight under threat of arrest to make room for a ‘dead-heading’ flight attendant after she had already boarded the plane in an episode that is reminiscent of the infamous Dr David Dao incident.
The latest incident took place late Saturday evening when Frontier Airlines was still recovering from the aftereffects of the CrowdStrike and Microsoft IT outage and trying to reposition crewmembers where they were needed.
One such flight with repositioning crewmembers assigned to sit in passenger seats was Flight 1449 from Atlanta to Denver, which was due to depart at around 10:20 p.m. but ended up taking off nearly an hour late after the passenger was threatened with arrest to make room for the crewmembers.
Taking to Reddit, the woman’s boyfriend described how she had already taken her seat when gate agents boarded the plane and ordered her off under threat of arrest, despite another passenger offering to give up an extra seat they had booked for their infant.
The circumstances of the woman’s removal from this Frontier flight are eerily similar to the Dr David Dao incident in which United Airlines had the Kentucky-based physician forcibly removed from a flight at Chicago O’Hare on April 9, 2017, to make room for repositioning crewmembers.
In that case, Dr Dao had already taken his seat when gate agents selected him to be bumped from the flight without first asking for volunteers. Dr Dao refused to leave and was physically dragged off the plane by security personnel, leaving him bruised, bloodied and battered.
In the wake of the Dr David Dao incident, many airlines made a slew of changes to how they dealt with overbooking situation and ‘denied boarding’ situations in order to avoid anything similar ever happening again.
The Department of Transportation (DOT) also introduced guidelines and regulations to help protect consumers, although those rules do little to help the passenger booted from his Frontier flight.
The DOT is very clear that airlines are allowed to overbook flights but if everyone turns up and there isn’t enough room onboard, they must first ask for volunteers to give up their seat before involuntarily bumping passengers.
You would have thought that that rule would have protected the medical student in this case. Unfortunately, the exception to this rule is that if an airline has to substitute a smaller plane for the one it planned to use, then no compensation is due.
Once she got off the plane, it’s alleged that the gate agents “essentially just laughed at her” and refused to book her on another flight to Denver.
Unfortunately, the woman decided to buy another ticket with Delta Air Lines at her own expense but given the airline’s ongoing operational meltdown, she ended up missing the wedding which was the whole purpose of her traveling to Denver.
Frontier Airlines maintains some pretty restrictive policies to assist passengers in the end of a significant delay or cancellation. For example, the ultra-low-cost carrier doesn’t offer hotels, ground transportation, compensation or travel vouchers in the event of a major delay or cancellation.
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