Frontier Airlines is suing American Airlines over damage to a plane they caused in 2024. Liability is an open and shut case. American even already offered half the repair costs. The suit was filed on Friday in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts.
A moving American plane struck a parked Frontier jet at the gate. They’ll try to reduce liability and dispute Frontier’s damages – loss of use of the aircraft didn’t actually reduce the carrier’s profits. It might even have improved their financial results!
- Around noon on November 25, 2024, an American Airlines Boeing 777 arriving from London Heathrow struck the wingtip of a Frontier Airbus A321 that was parked at its gate in Boston, with passengers on board waiting to depart for Dallas – Fort Worth.
- The American jet was parking at an adjacent gate and its wing swiped the Frontier wing and sharklet.
The Frontier flight was cancelled, the plane was removed from service, and it was grounded for six days. They report repair costs at $670,387.45.
American agreed in September 2025 to pay half of those repair costs, while Frontier reserved rights to pursue the rest. Frontier now seeks the unpaid $335,193.73, plus loss of use, lost profit, and consequential damages based on negligence, gross negligence, and negligent training and supervision.
- American owed a duty to move, tow, marshal, park, and supervise its aircraft so it would not collide with a properly parked aircraft at an adjacent gate.
- American breached that duty by failing to maintain clearance, failing to keep adequate wing walker control.
- They claim systemic deficiencies in American’s safety protocols. This followed another American-Frontier ground collision in Miami earlier in the year.
If the aircraft was being towed in, though, there may be some allocation of risk and blame. American already offered payment, but I don’t believe that’s admissible to prove liability here. And at most it seems like the case involves ordinary negligence and not gross negligence. They probably get the repair cost – but no more – unless there’s an unknown smoking gun that comes out in discovery.
The truth is, though, the Frontier’s damages aren’t that significant. Taking the plane out of service for six days means not flying their least profitable (money-losing) routes. They were paying on the aircraft and will still have to pay crew, and had displaced passengers. They would have saved fuel. And they would have selected flights that were lightly booked anyway. This isn’t an airline that’s been making money.
What hurts American is that this was the second incident of the year with Frontier, making the narrative around a “systemic problem” plausible enough to pursue. That’s not gross negligence but it’s leverage.
Frontier previously sued American over damage to a parked Frontier A321neo’s vertical stabilizer after an American plane hit it during pushback in March 2024. That time the aircraft remained out of service for about six months.
“plus loss of use, lost profit, and consequential damages based on negligence, gross negligence, and negligent training and supervision.”
I’m pretty sure that some of those charges will get dropped or were just added for the sake of the article. Loss of profit covers loss of use, and gross negligence covers the fact you used it three times.
Frontier should get compensation for full repairs and loss of use. A moving aircraft is always responsible for damages including to anything parked; that is no different than laws for automobiles.
and the F9 aircraft was scheduled to operate flights so there are costs to pulling it out of service. They might or might not have had backup aircraft that could cover for the damaged aircraft for some or all of the week it was out of service (and the court should ask them to verify if that was the case or not) but the flights at least that day were losses to revenue while costs – including crew costs – were still incurred.
Again?? Oh, brother…
Just because your too snooty to fly low cost carriers doesn’t mean you need to degrade them by the way you talk about them. They allow some people to fly to places they otherwise would not be able to. They also help keep the prices down for those that don’t fly them. Acting like American is doing them a favor by damaging their aircraft is an insult. Imagine you were a passenger in that plane and thump the American plane hit it. You would not be a happy camper having to be rebooked and most likely much later all caused by a 100% preventable accident
American is a cheapskate when planes collide and when they damage your luggage