A woman standing in the aisle of a Frontier Airlines flight refused to step aside while other passengers got off the plane in Baltimore this week. She won’t wait in her row of seats, but she also won’t leave the aircraft. So she’s just blocking the aisle. Her child is seated rows behind her, and she wants to wait for them. In the aisle.
She physically blocked the aisle, trying to force the cabin to clear in her preferred order – standing in the way of everyone else for her convenience, turning everyone else’s time into her leverage.
A flight attendant calmly offers the obvious fix for waiting but she’s having none of it… although eventually she yields and deplaning resumes.
Generally people seem to react with the obvious – that the woman is wrong, and the flight attendant handled things well. By blocking the aisle, other passengers can’t move forward, and neither can the woman’s kid!
Others frame it as anxious parenting and travel illiteracy (the latter not uncommon on airlines which focus on once a year or less leisure travelers). “Just another satisfied Frontier experience.”
A woman refuses to let an entire airplane full of passengers exit because she wants her daughter (who is several seats behind her) to be let up first.
This is rock bottom IQ and abysmal civic etiquette at work. pic.twitter.com/Y7ujvZtxEC
— Amiri King (@AmiriKing) October 7, 2025
Airlines monetize seat assignments, but ultra-low cost carriers especially so. Frontier Airlines actually does guarantee families sit together (unlike Spirit). “Although Frontier will provide adjacent seats if available at the time of booking, Frontier might not provide seat assignments right away. ”
- Families should secure seat assignments! That’s on them!
- If they don’t then gate agents and/or flight attendants should work with families where possible to seat families together at boarding. That’s when it’s far less possible.
- And it requires asking!
The flight attendant did a great job at de-escalation here. It would have been helpful for the passenger to work with crew prior to departure, though. Nobody wants to sit with your kids. But it takes reasonability on all sides, and offering other passengers better seats in order to switch. If you have an aisle and a middle in different rows, don’t offer someone the middle. That’s what usually happens – revealing the priority isn’t actually to sit together, but to preserve your own seat.
That’s the Spirit!
Remember, the misbehavior is the problem, not the background of the individual(s)…
That said, I look forward to whomever ‘goes there’ anyway, so I can ‘roast’ you on here.
This is Frontier Airlines.
It should be illegal to charge anybody for seat selection assignment. Reasons:
1) Families have to decide between being paying or being spread out all over the place.
2) There has been talk of requiring airlines to not charge so families can sit together. That is discrimination against single people. Expecting them to pay for seat selection but not families.
3) When families choose not to pay for seating — then it creates problems:
* If they have middle seats all over the plane — nobody will want to swap. You can’t expect somebody to swap aisle for middle or window for middle. You can ask, but do you seriously think somebody will do so? Some folks might be nice to allow a child sit next to a parent. But it’s still unfair for them to have to swap aisle or window for middle because the airlines charge for seat selection.
* If families are proactive and speak with the GA or FA — it adds stress to the GA or FA when it’s a full flight and there’s not really a lot that can be done. The clock is ticking, and employees are under pressure from higher up to get flights out on time.
* Sometimes parents will act entitled and steal somebody’s seat — and they don’t care if somebody paid extra to select a seat. That creates stress for the FAs who are trying to get the flight out on time. And… stress for the FAs because they have to play referee and deal with entitled pax.
Another problem can happen when families are separated: If you have rogue FAs who bully passengers into taking a crappy seat after they paid extra for a good seat. Like Mitra Amirzadeh who (according to an article), “has revealed the method she uses to help young families when airline passengers refuse to swap seats to accommodate children.” (I have a problem with the word “refuse.” People do NOT “refuse” to swap seats, they DECLINE to swap seats.).
* Another thing this bully FA (Mitra Amirzadeh) does according to the article… Sometimes Ms Amirzadeh will assign stubborn passengers the responsibility for entertaining children sat alone as punishment: “I have said before, ‘OK, so you’re going to watch the toddler?’”
—-> As you can see, this bully FA uses INFLAMMATORY words like “REFUSE to swap seats,” or “STUBBORN passengers”). And this B.S. about “you are going to watch the child.” Bully flight attendants like Mitra Amirzadeh need to be fired.
If they pay at all, the fare for kids is the same as another passenger. Families travelling with kids should be treated the same as any other customer. That means no preboarding and certainly not holding up boarding and/or deplaning to get the kiddies off.
God love it. You have to love America. We moved to Europe and we are deprived of all the fun. You guys have all the luck.
An earlier post indicated that this was Frontier, not Spirit. Not that it really matters because they both welcome folks like this to their exclusive airport lounges.
My fear is if Spit Airlines fails and goes belly up we will have more of these kind of emotionally damaged folks on other carriers
More importantly the legacy carriers will double and triple the costs of airline tickets
Especially the only premium carrier in AMERICA DELTA that has deeply discounted tickets and
the lowest priced award travel of any airline in the world (sarcasm)
You cannot excuse that behavior based on being new to flying (if applicable). It’s bully behavior of a person that thinks things like line cutting is acceptable if they benefit.
Bully behavior is inexcusable. Line cutting is not necessarily that.