Gate agents with Frontier Airlines have been relieved of their duties after a viral video showed them mocking a passenger and refusing to check him in following a disagreement over a $25 fee.
Per the New York Post, the incident occurred on Friday, May 2, and the back-and-forth started when the 45-year-old passenger was going through the process of checking in for his Frontier flight to Boston from Raleigh, North Carolina.
The passenger told the news outlet that though he was at the airport some 50 minutes before departure, he couldn’t go through the check-in process at the electronic kiosk because he failed to fulfill a Frontier policy which stipulates that passengers must arrive an hour before takeoff. He said he was unaware of that policy.
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The passenger said he was subsequently told to pay a $25 fee to be able to check in when he followed up with a Frontier employee. But things then went downhill.
“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,’” the passenger said in reference to what happened before he started recording their conversation.
The passenger said he ultimately decided to pay the $25 fee after 20 minutes, adding that when he was going for his wallet, he said, “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 recalled.
“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.”
In the viral footage, two Frontier gate agents are seen having a back-and-forth with the passenger while appearing to mock him. They are also seen with their phones out and in his direction.
“You thought you were gonna get on your flight?” one of the agents is heard saying as the other also laughs.
“What was remarkable to me also is that not one person on their side took the professional route or the high road,” the passenger told the New York Post. “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 added: “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 passenger said he ultimately had a conversation with officers who later responded to the scene. “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,” he claimed.
“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 continued: “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 said he ultimately returned home on a Jetblue flight, adding that the ticket cost him $500. He later filed a complaint with Frontier, and the airline reimbursed him.
“We are aware of what occurred and have been directly in touch with the customer,” a Frontier spokesperson told the news outlet. “The individuals in question, who work for a third-party contractor, are no longer associated with the Frontier account.”
A couple gate agents got terminated from their gigs with #FrontierAirlines after mocking a customer who was trying to check in for his flight … getting the boot after video of their tense exchange went viral.
— TMZ (@TMZ) May 8, 2025
Full story in HERE: https://t.co/zaR1KRZlyd pic.twitter.com/7q3MK78lpz
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