Frontier removes departure time from boarding passes
Passengers flying Frontier Airlines will notice something familiar missing from their boarding passes: the departure time.
Instead, Frontier will now list the time that "boarding begins" and the time that the boarding "door closes," which is 10 minutes prior to a flight's scheduled departure time.
Frontier began rolling out the new boarding pass format late last week, and the move appears to be a first among big U.S. carriers. The nation's nine other large carriers – Alaska Airlines, American, Delta, JetBlue, Hawaiian, Spirit, Southwest, United and Virgin America – all confirmed to USA TODAY that they still list departure times on their boarding passes.
None indicated an imminent change to that practice.
"We have no plans to remove departure time from our boarding passes," Spirit Airlines spokesman Paul Berry says.
As for Frontier, spokesman Jim Faulkner says the goal for the change is to keep flights on schedule.
"It's part of our emphasis to ensure an on-time departure for our customers," Faulkner tells Today in the Sky. "If the door closes 10 minutes before scheduled departure, customers still have time to stow their bags, get their seatbelts fastened and get settled in so that the plane can push back from the gate on time or before."
"If we're closing the door at the same time as the scheduled departure time, we're already running behind," he adds.
One industry expert describes Frontier's boarding-pass change as a relatively minor one. But he says it could be helpful to passengers nonetheless.
"I like the idea," says Brett Snyder, author of The Cranky Flier blog and operator of the Cranky Concierge travel service.
He notes most airlines already close their boarding doors before a flight's scheduled departure time. So Frontier's decision to list that time on its boarding passes instead "just makes it more clear to customers" about when they should be at the gate.
"They're going to close the door anyway, but hopefully this means there are less people still on the other side of it," Snyder says. "I don't see a downside."
