TAMPA, Fla. — When passengers get on a flight, they expect to arrive at their destination, but one airline has a policy where it can drop customers off in a different city, miles away, and consider it the same as the city on the ticket.
Kevin Vaughn says that the same airline left his 83-year-old mom stranded at Tampa International Airport late at night after her flight to Sarasota was diverted to Tampa.
WATCH full report by Susan El Khoury
“Isn’t there some responsibility that an airline has that if they dump you off at a foreign airport?”
Vaughn, who lives in Manatee County, arranged for his mom, who lives in Ohio, to visit over the holidays last December.
“I have no relatives down here, so my mom was going to come down for a week during New Year's Eve to spend with me,” Vaughn explained. “I booked a nonstop flight through Frontier from Cleveland to Sarasota.”
Vaughn was waiting at Sarasota International Airport and said he noticed his mom’s arrival time kept getting pushed back. He said he asked, but no Frontier employee told him that his mom’s flight was diverted to Tampa due to fog.
“I was lost, I had no idea where I was,” said Mary, who is now back in Cleveland, during a phone call. “Those people didn’t know what was going on.”
Mary said she went to baggage claim, where a Frontier employee first told her the flight would be reboarded, then said it wasn’t leaving and gave her a card with contact information for requesting a refund.
“She was pretty much just in a state of panic, Vaughn said. “You just left this 83-year-old woman at baggage claim at Tampa International. How is she getting to Sarasota?”
Since it was approaching midnight, Vaughn said he got on the road and made the more than 50-mile drive to Tampa.
“They should arrange for the transport of those passengers to their final destination; those people are counting on being somewhere,” he added.
They asked Frontier for a refund, but months later received a letter from the airline that stated weather is “uncontrollable” and in those cases, Frontier doesn’t compensate or reimburse passengers. The letter also claimed Mary was ineligible for a refund because she was rebooked and boarded a flight to Sarasota the next day.
Vaughn said that is not true—he picked up his mom the same night.
Last year, the US Department of Transportation changed its rules requiring airlines to automatically refund passengers if their flight is significantly changed. The rule spells out a significant change, including arrivals at a different airport.
However, the U.S. DOT rule doesn’t require airlines to provide alternative transportation or get a customer to their final destination. It also says airlines only have to refund for the unused portion of travel, and if they’re rebooked and take a new flight, there is no required compensation.
ABC Action News started looking into Frontier and found a policy travelers may not know about. Frontier has a list of what it calls “sister cities.” The cities can be hundreds of miles and hours away from each other, but Frontier considers them to be at the same point.
Map of Frontier Airlines Sister Cities in the southern US
In Florida, most major airports, including Tampa, Miami, and Jacksonville, are considered sister cities by Frontier. In other parts of the country, cities as far apart as Dallas, Texas, Nashville, Tennessee, and Little Rock, Arkansas, are Frontier sister cities. Frontier also claims Washington, D.C., and Portland, Maine, are sister cities; to get between those cities, it’s an hour and a half flight or a nine-hour drive.
“That doesn’t smell fair,” said Attorney Bill Thrush, who works with LegalShield and is a Managing Partner at the Baltimore-based firm Friedman, Framme & Thrush. Thrush’s work includes contract and corporate law.
When asked by ABC Action News if he had ever heard of Frontier’s sister cities, Thrush responded, “I had not until you all approached me.”
“I was a little bit flabbergasted by it. I was like, 'How do they get away with it?'"
Thrush said customers should know that when they buy an airline ticket, they’re entering what’s called a “contract of carriage” with an airline. Most airlines, like Frontier, post those contracts online, which is how ABC Action News found the sister city policy.
“Frontier can say this is our policy, and if you sign up for our contract, you’re agreeing to this policy, but you can also say, well, it’s not reasonable for me,” Thrush explained. “That issue has never been litigated, so whether that’s going to work or not is a question that’s still open in my opinion.”
When asked how Frontier’s sister cities policy works given the U.S. DOT’s rule change for significantly changed flights Thrush answered, “[Frontier] can get up and make an argument that we delivered you where you were supposed to go, we adhered to the DOT policy because our contract of carriage said if you go to point A and you end up at point B and those are sister cities, it’s the same thing.”
A Frontier spokesman turned down an interview and wouldn’t answer multiple questions ABC Action News posed about sister cities. The airline said a week after the flight, Vaughn received a refund to cover the miles that weren’t flown by his mom, which came out to just over $50. Frontier added notifications about the diversion that were sent to the email address and mobile number on file.
None of it is sitting well with Vaughn, who maintains Frontier should have done more for his elderly mom.
“That was a lot of inconvenience for me to go all the way to Tampa and back that night at midnight,” he said. “It was just inhumane to drop her off in Tampa and say, 'Okay, we’re done.'"