Avoiding Frontier Airlines' Carrier Interface Charge

22 Jan 2024   money travel

I recently booked a flight from San Francisco (SFO) to Orlando (MCO). Normally, my wife and I fly the bigger carriers–Delta, JetBlue, United, Alaska–but this was a solo trip, so I had the “luxury” of choosing a cheaper option. Frontier Airlines had the least expensive flights by a few hundred dollars but most of the routes were awful, such as a 20-hour layover in Denver. After a bit a searching, I found a route that wasn’t totally insane and pulled the trigger.

During checkout, I was prompted to choose a seat and pay for carry-on baggage. I declined both, deciding in the moment that I would challenge myself to see just how little I could pay. After declining a few more add-ons, I entered my credit card information and received a confirmation email with the following cost breakdown:

As you may have guessed, the “Carrier Interface Charge” jumped out at me; I had no idea what it was, it was apparently non-refundable, and I paid it four times! Google and Reddit told me that the charge was for using the website to book the flights (really?), and that I could avoid the fee by booking the flights at the airport.

As luck would have it, I had an unrelated flight out of SFO the following morning.

Challenge accepted.

I arrived at the airport about 30 minutes earlier than usual and walked straight to the Frontier Airlines counter (the queue was empty, thankfully). I explained that I wanted to purchase a flight in-person to avoid the “Carrier Interface Charge,” but the agent had no idea what I was talking about. “That’s okay,” I said, “Let’s just see how much it would cost to book the same flights using your system.”

Lo and behold, the total was $92 less than when I booked the tickets online, which is exactly how much I paid in carrier interface charges. I promptly canceled my previous booking and gave the agent my ID and credit card to complete the new booking, again declining add-ons like seat selection. A few moments later, I received the following confirmation email:

Success!

A few notes:

• The agent actually wrote down the words “Carrier Interface Charge” and beside them, “Website fee.” She seemed stunned that such a fee existed. You and me both.

• In my humble opinion, booking via the website is easier and cheaper for both parties, and charging a fee is basically just extortion. “What are you going to do, drive to the airport just to book flights?” Yes, yes I am.

• It’s super shady–fraudulent?–that Frontier Airlines charged the fee four times. If you want to charge me a fee for the convenience of booking a trip on your website, then it should be a single fee, not per leg of the trip (one layover in each direction).

• Despite the carrier interface charge being non-refundable, it was refunded because I canceled the old booking within 24 hours. To Frontier’s credit, their cancellation page told me exactly how much money I would be refunded so I knew ahead of time if the swap would save me money.

• Minor correction to the story above: I actually booked new flights before canceling the old ones. And I’m kind of surprised I was able to double-book myself for the same flights. Shouldn’t there be a sanity check somewhere?

• Despite declining seat selection at the counter, the agent still assigned me a seat. In fact, she assigned me the same window seat on all four flights. Maybe something in their system requires a seat selection, even if the customer declines one?

• It goes without saying, but I will probably never book Frontier Airlines tickets via their website again. Depending on how the flights go, I may never book in person, either.

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