Trip Report: Frontier Airlines, New Orleans to Atlanta (April 2022)

  Trip Report: Frontier Airlines, New Orleans to Atlanta
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I fly from New Orleans to Atlanta a lot of surprising there are a lot of options.  The standards are Delta, which have a flight almost every hour or so; Southwest which does not as much availability but comes with perks such as free bags; Spirit which has limited availability but comes at a lower cost; and Frontier which only has one flight a day and is comparable to Spirit.  I have flown Delta, Southwest and Spirit on this route many times and used to fly Frontier but they stopped this route.  They have recently reintroduced the route so decided to try them again.

The Frontier flight from New Orleans to Atlanta leaves on at a different time depending on which day

you are traveling.  On the day I was traveling, the flight departed at 4:20pm and arrive into Atlanta at 6:52p; on the next day, the flight left at 7am and arrived into 9am and there was no afternoon flight.  I am not sure what the pairing or timing is but that is Frontier.  Frontier is a low-cost airline so the ticket only includes the seat and a personal item, everything else requires payment.  Frontier, like Spirit, has introduced 'Bundle packages' in which you can bundle a seat, a carry-on, checked baggage and priority boarding.  I have done this many times on Spirit and have always found it beneficial, especially the extra luggage and the priority boarding.  I was only going for a short period so I did not need the extra luggage but the person I was traveling with was going for a longer period and the extra carry-on was $35-40 and the bundle that included everything was $50 so it was more cost-effective to get the bundle; even with the bundle the ticket was less than $100.

Booking the flights on the app is a lot easier than the website - the website for me kept spinning and taking longer than necessary; this is where Spirit wins in the low-cost area as their website is faster (app is slower and a bit useless).  Both Spirit and Frontier do try and upsell you throughout the entire booking process and this is where you can select the various bundles.  I have bundled many times on Spirit and my travel companion bundled with Frontier; the bundle that I normally choose includes a carry-on in addition to your personal item, a checked baggage (at 18kg/40lbs instead of the standard 23kg/50lbs), priority boarding and seat selection.  If you do not choose any of the bundles, then the only thing included in your ticket is a personal item; everything else comes at a cost.  I was able to check-in 24-hours in advance and on Frontier I was given the option at the beginning to buy a seat but then afterwards there was no availability to look at the seat-map; on Spirit you are able to see the seatmap after boarding and potentially move seats within your section.  

The flight was scheduled to depart at 4:20pm and the plane was already at the gate (it had earlier come

from Atlanta) and so boarding started ontime at 3:50pm.  Unlike Spirit, Frontier only made one announcement regarding hand carry items.  Frontier boards in groups and if you purchase a bundle, that includes priority boarding so boarding in Group 1.  I was in group 3 but after group 1 the groups were not really enforced.  The operating aircraft was an Airbus A320 with a 3-3 seat configuration.  The style of the seat, the seat pitch, and the seat width all reminded me of Spirit; Frontier seats even had the tiny tray table similar to Spirit.  Both airlines offer a basic seat that is already 'prereclined' so you cannot recline anymore, the seats are decent but only for short-haul and will be uncomfortable for long-haul, and the seat pitch is tight so decent for short-haul but again would be uncomfortable for long-haul.  Once onboard, I did ask the flight attendant if the flight was full and if I could move; they said the flight was full but that was incorrect as they did allow people to move upfront or to exit rows but did charge them for these moves ($50 to sit in the exit seat).   Everyone boarded and the door closed, we pushed back ontime and headed out to Atlanta.

The flight was very basic and minimal.  Because of tail winds + short flight time + some turbulence, normal inflight service was not going to operate but rather if you wanted something then you had to ring your call bell and you could order directly from the FA's.  Other than that, the flight was very basic and not really exciting.  After 50mins, we started our descent into Atlanta and landed on-time and taxied to the gate.  One thing in the air - the FA's kept mentioning keeping a tidy airplane and that if we could help them since they had to turn the plane to Las Vegas and that 'they were the cleaning crew'.  The FAs also did an odd thing on the ground; I had put my carryon in the overhead above row 3 and I was further back.  When row 3 deplaned, my bag was still there since it would take some time for my row to deplane; but in the meanwhile the FAs was going through the overhead and taking down all the bags that were left and putting them on the seats.   This is fine except this information was not told to the passengers so I only noticed as I was trying to understand what they were doing with bag.  It was very odd.

Overall, it was an interesting experience with Frontier.  Many aspects of the process were similar toother ULCC including Spirit so in that sense at certain aspects you could not tell whether you were flying Frontier or Spirit.  Based on this experience, I would not hesitate to fly Frontier short-haul if the timings were right, the price were right, and it was short-haul.