<p>There are issues right now with @FlyFrontier. Son was at airport 3 hours before flight. His plane landed coming in from Salt Lake City only 20 minutes late but they didn’t board last night and were told there would be a two hour delay. After two hours they said there would be another two hour day and then 3 hours after the flight was to leave they cancelled the flight. He got lost in DIA and by the time he got to the counter there were over 400 people in line. Apparently many Frontier flights were cancelled. He finally got re-ticked for this morning and they put him in a hotel since he was over four hours from his college apartment already. He got to the airport at 6 AM this morning for his 10 AM flight and ALL flights to our nearest (international airport) were cancelled. Security guards at the Frontier ticket counter. @FlyFrontier says NO flights available within 5 hours of our home (no seats at all into Michigan according to Frontier)…so he gave up. I’m so sad. A pilot friend is checking loads at DIA, but son has left the airport to find a bus back to his campus apartment. Wow. Something is really rotten at Frontier. I suspect a blue flu work stoppage.</p>
<p>That’s terrible! Sounds like he did everything right. Waiting at an airport is so exhausting – I’m not surprised he gave up. Any option for a flight opening up later today?</p>
<p>I so feel for you. :(</p>
<p>Any other way to work things out? I bet he feels awful too. Hugs.</p>
<p>No @FlyFrontier told him zero seats on any airline anywhere in Michigan until after Christmas. He gave up. My pilot friend is now flying but I’d will get to the bottom of this situation. I’m very, very angry and very, very sad. If it’s a work stoppage it’s a pretty bad thing to do to people.</p>
<p>That’s awful, momofthreeboys! I am so sorry! I would be furious in your place.</p>
<p>I am not sure how to do this, I don’t use twitter, but I know that people sometimes use it to complain about things like this, and companies monitor the twitter-verse and tend to respond in these situations. Is this something you might try?</p>
<p>It looks like Frontier airlines filed for bankruptcy in April?
Can he get a train or bus ticket?
How far does he have to go?</p>
<p>Aww. So sorry momofthree. That sucks.</p>
<p>Can he fly in to Chicago or Minneapolis and hop a flight to LAN?</p>
<p>Yes, can he fly to a state nearby (on another airline) and then take a bus or train the rest of the way? </p>
<p>I feel for you (and him).</p>
<p>Very tough. Flights are so full, I know mstee’s D had a flight cancelled a few days ago, and the first flight they could put her on is tomorrow (Christmas Eve). You might check Sun Country or Southwest websites (they do all their online reservations outside of the big websites like Yapta, Expedia, and Travelocity). So I don’t know what an airline agent can see if they are checking other airlines, but maybe there is something open there. Sun Country has a Mpls to Lansing route, which is why I thought of it.</p>
<p>He could have gotten a train and would have come in to our nearest station midnight tomorrow…but he would have had to pull that trigger last night. Last night @FlyFrontier booked him on a flight this morning…that got cancelled, all flights to his original airport were cancelled today. He’s too young to rent a car…or he could have driven home starting last night and gotten here tonight. Frontier says they couldn’t get him to Chicago or Detroit or Lansing or anywhere within a 5 hour drive for us. I was on the phone with him until 3 AM my time last night and again at 6 AM his time this morning. He’s just exhausted and gave up and decided to go back to his off campus apartment. But yes I twittered the news media in Denver and am still Twittering. There are military people who only had 48 hours leave. There were Denver people that were simply told to go home, they wouldn’t even try to rebook them. Pretty crappy. </p>
<p>Son works in Residential Life office and he’s now mad because they had exams on Friday. In previous years he was “done” by the 14th or 15th. He had no choice but to fly yesterday (as he had a scheduled exam on Friday). He says he’s going to talk to everyone at the college about scheduling so tight to the holidays. He’s taking it better than i am.</p>
<p>I don’t know what state he is in. You are in Michigan? Can he look into train schedules and get a train to some place fairly near you? If he got on a train, he likely could be where you are in time for XMas.</p>
<p>EDIT…I cross posted with you, OP. But what if he takes a train today and gets to you on Christmas Day itself? Or what about bus lines?</p>
<p>I am afraid this is kind of the new normal.</p>
<p>In the last couple of years, many airlines have reduced the number of flights they operate (sometimes even grounding part of their fleet) so that the planes that do fly, fly fuller. They had little choice. In order to compete for passengers, they had to cut fares to the bone. While they’ve been doing that, fuel costs have tended to rise. (Yes, they fluctuate, like gasoline prices, and yes, they’re not as high now as they have been, but many airlines have been hammered by the price of jet fuel.) They can’t afford to operate flights that aren’t at or near capacity.</p>
<p>This creates several problems for passengers. One is that flying becomes more and more unpleasant. Every flight is crowded, and the gates are crowded, and the overhead bins are stuffed to overflowing, and so on. Additionally, when there is a disruption to service in a large part of the country, such as a hurricane or a huge snowstorm, when flights resume, they have no excess capacity to absorb the passengers who’ve been stranded in recent days. Under the best of circumstances, it can take days for the system to get back to normal. And sadly, the weekend before Christmas is far from “the best of circumstances.”</p>
<p>So, momofthreeboys, I’m sure you’re really frustrated and disappointed, and I know this doesn’t help, but I think the problem may not be Frontier specifically. I think the problem is the American airline industry. But I sure am sorry for your family’s troubles.</p>
<p>Air Canada has flights today and tomorrow from Denver to Toronto. I know because one of my Ds has a friend arriving from Denver tomorrow. She was able to book her flight within the past couple of days after finding out that she’d be able to get some time off. And I know that AC has a lot of flights from here to Detroit. Maybe that’s a possibility?</p>
<p>Sikorsky has it right about the new normal. The last several times I’ve flown I’ve taken voluntary bumps on flights that were ridiculously overbooked. DS is in Boston, we are in CA. I now know better than to book anything with connections. He flies from BOS direct to LA and then we make a three hour trek to the airport. Still sometimes gets messed up if Boston has weather but the odds improve doing it this way.<br>
It’s a sign of our economy. Rotten all the way around.</p>
<p>I’m so sorry, momofthreeboys. Is it possible to do lots of skyping, to include him as much as possible in the festivities?</p>
<p>Denver had issues with other airlines due to weather, so it may not be a work stoppage. As people on earlier flights were booked onto later flights, they became overfull, and it means there is no room to rebook your son. Sikorski is right - this really is the new normal, and it makes a certain amount of sense. Airlines are operating on a very tight margin right now - it is expensive to fly, but people clammor for low cost flights. The only way they do that is to fill the airplanes, and because people miss flights, or double book themselves, the airlines have to overbook to fill the planes.</p>
<p>It wasn’t as bad for us, but we ran into a similar situation in November, when visiting Colorado College, in Colorado Springs. In order to get back home to the east coast, without missing morning events (like a class visit, kind of the purpose of visiting a campus), we had a choice of flying to LAX, then overnight to Charlotte, and then home - or get a rental car, and fly out of Denver through Detroit, which is what we chose. When we got to Denver, our flight was delayed to the point that we would miss our connection. We were given the choice of spend the night in Denver or Detroit - we chose Detroit, because at least we would be closer to home. The next morning, our flight out of Detroit was delayed, because there was no first officer - the one originally assigned couldn’t work because he had been on the clock too many hours already. That’s OK with me - I’d rather be safe! Rather than arrive home 10pm Monday night, we didn’t get home until Noon on Tuesday, and D missed an extra day of school.</p>
<p>Again, it’s unfortunately the new normal.</p>
<p>You know I am sad. But he is alive. He will be OK. Frontier also stranded dozens if not hundreds of servicemen and women who only had 48 hour leaves. I can’t imagine how those families feel. Son told me they were all over DIA last night trying to get home if even for a half a day. I have to keep focused on the small blessings. If it was a walk out everyone of those employees deserves to be fired…they could have done it at the tail end of the holiday season. If I find out it was a walkout, and I have enough connections that work at various airlines and terminals that I have reached out to try and find out the real story, I will use every ounce of my media savvy to tell this sad story of the hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people inconvenienced. As my H said, if it was the blue flu it certainly didn’t count for one of the 26 acts of kindness.</p>
<p>CTScoutmom…it happened suddenly last night. All the frontier flights were on time to maybe 20 minutes late. No major system delays. Planes were landing but suddenly there was no crew. Again this morning planes but no crew. It “smells” funny. I sent the Denver Post a twitter this morning after my son told me security guards had arrived at the Frontier check in counter. It was either staged or Frontier had an epic operations break down.</p>
<p>Momofthreeboys–i have no solutuon to add to what others have said, just wanted to say how sorry I am.</p>