Frontier Airlines | A321neo | MSP-DEN
Flight Information
Origin: Denver International Airport (DEN/KDEN)
Destination: Minneapolis - Saint Paul International Airport (MSP/KMSP)
Aircraft: Airbus A321neo (N611FR - Bori the Coquí Llanero Livery)
Airline: Southwest Airlines (WN/SWA)
Flight Number: WN313
Date: October 19th - October 20th, 2024
Flight Time: 1 hour, 29 minutes
Seat: 27A
Server: Ultra-Maxiumum Expert
This journey started out as so many Frontier flights do - with a delay. Initially, we were scheduled for a 2.5 hour layover in Denver. A little long, but not horrible. About 30 minutes into our layover, I got a notification from Flighty about a half hour delay. 10 minutes later, Frontier gave a text alert explaining the delay was due to “crew issues” (more on that later). Well, it’s only 30 minutes. Could be worse. Another 10 minutes go by, and we get another 30 minute delay, also for “crew scheduling issues.”
Finally, boarding commenced. Interestingly, most of Frontier gates don’t have jet bridges, rather they use ramps for boarding.
We were in Group 4, and boarding was pretty efficient. I was slightly worried about my backpack not meeting Frontier’s very strict bag size policy, but they didn’t seem to be checking anyones bags in the sizer.
The seats are pretty bad, to say the least. Legroom is abysmal, and the seats are basically metal frames with a thin material stretched over. It was clean, at least.
Everyone got settled in, the door was shut (which was very odd I later realized), they gave the safety announcement, and then briefed the exit row passengers. It seemed like pushback was imminent, but nothing happened. The flight attendants were milling about. After about 15 minutes, the captain comes on. Apparently, the flight attendants onboard aren’t actually our flight attendants. They just had them come on to get us boarded. Our actual flight crew just landed in from Atlanta (thus the delay), but he didn’t really know when they’d get to our plane, but that we’d have to remain seated until then.
Ok, fine. Another few minutes goes by, nothing. The seat is already painful, and we haven’t even gotten in the air. Finally, the real flight attendants get on and we start to push. One of the flight attendants came through the cabin checking the overhead bins as we moved back from the gate. As she reached the seat in front of me, the woman seated directly in front of me stood up. Here’s how the exchange between her and the flight attendant goes:
Flight attendant: “the seatbelt sign is on, please stay seated”
Woman: “Ive been waiting 3 hours (a vast exaggeration) on this piece of [BLEEP] plane! The least you could do is let me go to the bathroom!”
Flight attendant: “Ma’am, sit down right now.”
Woman: (Starts to sit down) “[Bleep] you, you [bleeping bleep]”
The flight attendant immediately starts rushing towards the forward galley. About 10 seconds later and the pushback stops. I pretty much have realized what’s happening.
After about 5 minutes, they start pulling us back into the gate. The door is reopened, and two Frontier gate agents/customer service people come on. They explain to the passenger that what she did is unacceptable, and that the flight crew has asked for her to be removed from the plane. She started arguing a little bit, but the gate agents shut that down pretty quick. The exchange was maybe a total of 45 seconds and she obliged and deplaned.
My biggest concern was that she had a checked bag and that they’d have to go through everything to find it. Luckily, it seemed like she didn’t because we almost immediately got underway, albeit about 2 hours behind schedule.
Finally, after a pretty quick taxi, we took off for Minneapolis. It was pretty choppy climbing out, and the seatbelt sign ended up staying on essentially the whole ride to MSP.
We cruised at 33,000 feet. The flight attendants opted not to due service, partially because of how bumpy it was and how short the flight is. We had pretty much sustained heavy light chop (don’t think it hit moderate) all the way through Colorado and Nebraska. For about 5 minutes Northwest of Sioux Falls, they turned off the seatbelt sign, but it quickly came back on for our approach.
We approached from the west, banked south, and came in for a pretty firm landing on 30L. Everyone was exhausted by the time we reached the gate, and it was probably the quietest deboarding I’ve ever seen. There were a few operations on the Delta side (T1), but T2 was pretty silent.
