Frontier Airlines agents jeer at passenger after hitting him with surprise fee: ‘You thought you were gonna get on your flight?’
ByReuven Fenton and
Emily Crane
Published May 7, 2025, 4:08 p.m. ET
558 Comments
Video shows viral confrontation between Frontier passenger and gate agents: ‘‘Never flying this sh—y airline again’
Wild viral footage has captured Frontier Airlines gate agents getting into a bust-up with a passenger who had sniped, “I’m never flying this sh—y airline again” after being hit with an unexpected $25 fee just to check in.
The caught-on-camera saga erupted when the male passenger — a 45-year-old married father of three — was trying to check in for his Frontier flight from Raleigh, NC, to Boston last Friday after a week-long business trip.
The passenger, who didn’t want to be identified, told The Post he’d arrived at the airport with roughly 50 minutes to spare but wasn’t able to check in on the electronic kiosk because, unbeknownst to him, he had missed the airline’s 60-minute pre-departure window.
When he went to speak to a Frontier employee, he was told he needed to cough up a $25 fee to check in at the desk per the airline’s policy.
That’s when he claims things turned sour.
“They all kind of started chiming in, ‘Well, you should have checked the website.’ Like not in a professional or polite way. They were like, ‘It was your fault for not checking the website. Sorry, it’s on you,'” he said of the moments before he decided to start filming.
After a 20-minute back-and-forth, the passenger said, he finally relented and agreed to pay the fee. As he reached for his wallet, he copped to muttering: “I’m never flying this sh—y airline again.”
“When I said that, the lady who I was talking to took a step back and gasped, and was like, ‘How dare you curse at me? I’m not checking you in. I don’t have to check you in.’ And my reaction was, ‘You will check me in.’ I think those were the words that I used,” he said.
“And when I said that, she completely just went — I don’t know if ‘ballistic’ is the word, but essentially she shut off completely and absolutely refused to check me in.”
The footage shows the moment two of the agent’s co-workers, who were dressed in long-sleeved black Frontier tops, chimed in and started pointing their own phones at him, repeatedly laughing: “You thought you were gonna get on your flight?”
The clip, which has already racked up millions of views on social media, sparked fierce debate online as many ripped the gate agents for their lack of professionalism.
Others, however, laid into the passenger for not adhering to the airline’s policy.
“What was remarkable to me also is that not one person on their side took the professional route or the high road,” the passenger said of the viral exchange.
“Listen, it’s my money at the end of the day, and when somebody is caught off guard with a charge that they feel is in some ways unfair or unreasonable, of course, they have a right to express themselves,” he continued.
“It’s not okay to be disrespectful of somebody for no reason, but I was not being disrespectful to them personally, in my opinion. I thought that they were being disrespectful to me out of the gate because I was complaining about a fee that I was completely caught off guard by.”
The man eventually threatened to get the cops involved and the employees quickly summoned officers over to the desk.
“I had a very, very professional conversation with two officers who were there and were completely empathetic. They 100% seemed to agree with where I was coming from. I asked them, off the record, essentially, am I being ridiculous here? And they both with serious expressions, sympathetic expressions, shook their heads, ‘No, we see these sorts of disagreements with this airline frequently, and this is probably not going to be the last one,’” he said.
“I’m sure I’m not the first person to have complained about a fee. I’m also 100% sure that I wasn’t complaining in as extreme a way as others have.”
The passenger ended up buying a $500 Jetblue ticket to get home to his wife and kids. Frontier later reimbursed him after he called to complain about the dust-up.
