Bottom-Tier Airlines

Well, we picked a grand place to fly to for the holidays! First, there's the huge blizzard that shut down Denver airport for three days right before Christmas. Then, there's the huge blizzard that canceled hundred of flights right after Christmas. Considering the inclement weather though, we were actually quite fortunate.

We didn't fly out until Saturday (the day after the airport re-opened). We had an 8:25 PM flight which ended up becoming an 11:45 PM flight, due to non-weather-related delays. So, for the second time in less than a month, I had the opportunity to spend over six hours at Seatac airport. This was after we checked the status of our flight on their website right before leaving the house. Apparently, their "real-time updates" are not as timely or as updated as I'd assumed.

Luckily, we made it into Denver in plenty of time for the Broncos game. We arrived at Chris' parents' place at 4:30 AM, so we had almost 8 hours before we had to leave for the game. Good thing, because missing the game would have really made Chris angry.

We flew back to Seattle on Thursday, the day the next big blizzard blew in. We made it out in time, but not before waiting in a line so long that it was actually called out in the news reports (it circled around the other airline check-in desks and across the "cavernous terminal" to the other side of the building).

We were there well in advance of our flight, but by the time we made it to the check-in terminals, we were too late to check in. This is because Frontier put us all in the same line, regardless of whether we needed to change our flights (and thus needed to talk to an agent) or just wanted to check in (and could do it ourselves at the self-service terminals). The terminals could not be over-ridden to allow us to check in within the 45-minute window, and the agents stationed at those desks did not have the hardware necessary to check us in or print boarding cards. Chaos ensued, as they finally realized that every single person on that side of the terminal (the first 1/5th of the line) was unable to check in to the terminals.

We eventually (after some panicked maneuvering by an agent and a lengthy sprint across the terminals, followed by sitting on the plane for an hour due to other delays) made it home, albeit without our luggage. At least they sent our bag to us, rather than making us go back to the airport to pick it up. Small victories.

Please note that we tried to call Frontier both the day before and the day of our flight, to make sure that it was still scheduled to leave on time and to find out if we needed to plan for extra time to check in. The 1-800 number was out of service and the Denver local number was busy every time we called. So it turns out that their website AND phone numbers are unreliable.

In addition, the delays and obstacles we faced were not weather-related. They were caused by poor planning and execution. Although the weather did impact every airline during the storms, none of the other airlines had problems at the times that we were flying (just after and just before the storms). Even the security lines were short and speedy.

Needless to say, we will be sticking to United in the future.

Stay tuned for an update about the fun part of our holidays -- being in Colorado!