A TikToker Blasted A Budget Airline For Adding Bag Charges & The Sizing Debate Is Intense

The budget airline Frontier is catching a lot of heat after one of its passengers blasted the company on TikTok for trying to charge extra for luggage, despite her bags appearing to be within the size limit.

TikToker Dyana Villa accused Frontier Airlines staff of trying to charge her extra because she pushed her personal item into the size checker at the airport. However, Frontier says she isn't sharing the whole story.

Villa's videos have since accumulated millions of views, and people are in a rage over Frontier staff’s alleged behaviour.

In her first video, Villa shows a passenger placing a bag in the station that measures luggage. The video shows the bag going into the personal item slot.

“Frontier charged us because our bags “didn’t fit,” read the caption over Villa’s video.

In the video, Villa can be heard saying, “ma’am these bags fit,” to which the Frontier employee responds “ma’am it does not fit if you’re forcing it down.”

Villa once again shows the bags fitting into the personal item box, but the Frontier employee continued to dismiss them.

The second video in her series shows the next part of the interaction, and it's piled up over 3 million views to date.

“Nowhere does it say not to push it,” Villa says in the video. She goes on to show how the Frontier staff gave them an ultimatum to pay for the bag before the gates close.

In a separate video, Villa says the airline charged her family $100 for a carry-on bag that fit the size limit.

People in the comments section of her second video expressed their anger towards Frontier and were completely on Villa’s side.

One user commented: “Frontier should go out of business at this point. Idc HOW cheap their flights are. I’m never booking them,” which received over 14,000 likes.

“They need a class action lawsuit they keep doing this to people, and it is so wrong,” wrote another user.

Another commenter pointed out that “the bags fit,” in each of the videos on the topic, so Villa wasn’t fighting for nothing.

Villa shared multiple videos demonstrating how her bags fit into the sizing racks.

Despite Villa and the other passengers' pleas to let their bags through to the plane without paying, staff still insisted that the bags were forced into the size measurement compartment.

In another video, Villa interviewed another passenger, Sandra Romero, who was involved in the situation, and she shared that she was forced to “throw away her clothes because of Frontier.”

“It was a really bad experience today," Romero said.

A user commented under the video saying, “My cousin works for Frontier, she says they get a bonus for every bag they charge for,” which would somewhat explain the employee’s behaviour if that’s actually the case.

The situation only escalated from there because in another video Villa shared that the airlines weren’t letting her or Romero board the flight because they were filming the entire situation.

“They’re not letting us fly anymore. That is not fair. I’m never flying Frontier,” Villa says in her video.

Then the Frontier employees claimed on video that the reason Villa's group weren’t allowed onto the plane was that they “held up the line.”

“They closed the gate, and then three other couples came, and they opened the gate for them,” Villa said in one of her videos. “We were right there standing and they didn’t let us go on.”

Finally, Villa posted an update sharing that she finally got to her destination but not without going through a lot of trouble and eventually using another airline.

“13 hours later + different airline later, I made it to my destination. #cancelfrontierairlines” read the caption of her video.

Many people in the comment sections under Villa’s videos urged her to sue, while others suggested that people completely boycott Frontier for their actions.

Frontier told Narcity in a statement that Villa's videos do not show the entire context of the situation.

"The video fails to show that the customer using the sizer box had an additional carry-on bag. Each customer is allowed one free personal item that must fit within the smaller sizer box," a Frontier spokesperson said. "This customer had more than one bag and they were not able to combine them into a single bag that fit in the personal item box."

"The second customer’s bag did not fit into the free personal item sizer box without removing much of its contents," continued the spokesperson. "Most customers pay for their bags in advance, in accordance with our policies, and we provide multiple reminders and opportunities to do so at a lower price in advance of departure."

Frontier also said it would be "inequitable" to let Villa and other customers through the gates without paying for the extra bags, because other customers paid for theirs.

The Frontier spokesperson also acknowledged that gate agents get a "commission" for bag charges.

"It is simply an incentive for our airport customer service agents to help ensure compliance with our policies and that all customers are treated equally," read the statement.