Frontier Adds COVID-19 Surcharge to Tickets

Frontier Airlines has added a new “Covid Recovery Charge” to its ticket sales, according to the aviation blog ‘One Mile At A Time.’

The Denver-based airline is believed to be the first U.S. carrier to impose such a charge as part of its ticketing fee structure. It follows an example being set by some hotels as well as many restaurants, particularly in New York City, as businesses look to regain even a part of the money they lost to the pandemic.

According to One Mile At A Time, here’s how Frontier Airlines describes this new fee: The Covid Recovery Charge offsets added costs to Frontier due to implementing COVID-19 related measures, such as increased sanitation and cleaning on board the aircraft and in the airport, shields at the ticket counters and gate areas and personal protective equipment for employees. You’ll see this new fee reflected in ticket costs.

The blog speculated that the “Covid Recovery Charge” is a percentage of the “Carrier Interface Charge” (somewhere around seven percent). When the “Carrier Interface Charge” doubles, so does the “Covid Recovery Charge.”

One Mile At A Time also questioned the timing of implementing the new fee. If Frontier was trying to recoup monies laid out for unexpected costs like face shields and masks, why didn’t it introduce such a charge in June of 2020, at the height of the pandemic, instead of June 2021?

The answer to that might simply be in the numbers. A year ago, airline travel was still 70 percent off from what it had been in 2019, meaning fewer people were flying. Now, with pent-up demand leading to a surge in travel, more people are actually flying again thus making for more opportunity to charge the fee.

It will bear watching if other airlines follow suit, given that the industry is quite often a case of copycats when it comes to fares.