A Frontier Airlines passenger had his leg and “120 dollar Hokas” shoes “peed on during a flight.” He says that his eyes were closed, but he felt something, opened his eyes and took off his headphones to reveal “urine steadily flowing from the seat in front of” him onto his “shoe and leg.” The man who did this “had an accident.”
A crewmember directed him to the lavatory to clean up and gave him a bag, although it’s not clear whether that was to put his shoe in or to wear instead of a shoe. Airline staff told him to wait for a claims agent on arrival. She showed up 25 minutes after the gate arrival. However,
Instead of apologizing or saying I’m sorry for your experience she said “I am not the one who pissed on you, what do you want me to compensate.”
The customer wanted,
“empathy”a refundmiles
The airline offered a $75 credit towards a future flight. While the customer “understand[s] that it was not technically the airlines fault” he feels that the offer was only “better than nothing” and he remained miffed by “the tone in which [he] was spoken to.”
I guess I have two clarifying questions about the incident, and what a passenger like this is owed after the experience:
When another passenger does this to you, is it their fault (the passenger should compensate you), or the airline’s fault?
Is this the experience you’re buying with a ticket these days? Is it the experience you’re buying when you fly Frontier?
A passenger who behaves badly ought to be held responsible, but it’s far easier to hold the airline responsible. And they’re better-positioned to go after the actual offender than the victim is.
Similarly, this isn’t the experience a customer thinks they’re buying when they buy a ticket… even on Frontier. Though there are plenty of ‘passenger behaving badly’ stories, and many of those stories involve ultra-low cost airlines like Frontier, passenger incidents are down 80% compared to three years ago. And even then they represented a small portion of passengers and flights.
Perhaps there would have been a reasonable argument about assumption of risk in 2021, but that shouldn’t be valid today.
In the end it seems to me that an airline who fails to deliver a urine-free flight ought to refund the ticket price. They sold transportation, not urine-soaked transportation. But the person who actually did the thing ought to be on the hook for damages. It’s often harder, and not worth the effort to go after that passenger. The kind of person who does this on Frontier Airlines is, more likely than not, judgment-proof. And yet.