Hate on Frontier all you want, but at least they offer a premium seating option on most of their aircraft. As you’ll see in the following review, Frontier Airlines A319 Stretch seats are pretty good. At least good enough for the haters to pause for a second before instinctively pointing and laughing whenever they see one of these airplanes.
F9 555
Denver, CO (DEN) – San Diego, CA (SAN)
Sunday, June 21 2015
Aircraft: A319
Seat: 2F (Stretch Seat)
My full review of the Frontier Airlines A319 Stretch seat from Denver to San Diego
As much fun as these “out and back” trips are, it’s never a good feeling to wake before 5am to catch a flight home. Especially since the people in the room above mine in the hotel were noisy past 2am! I wasn’t well rested at all, and all I could think of was military-grade profanity when the alarm on my iPhone went off at 4:40am. To be honest, I didn’t really need to get up that early since I was technically already at the airport and my flight to SAN didn’t depart until 7:55am. I just wanted to make sure that I had enough time to take pictures (and maybe some video) so I got myself together as quickly as I could and set off for the terminal.
Arrival at the Denver International Airport
Dropping the rental car off took about 25 minutes (20 of that being spent waiting on the Avis shuttle bus), but I made it to the airport with plenty of time to spare. The main terminal at DEN sure is pretty – it’s certainly one of the nicest airports in the US at the moment.
The boarding process for flight number 555 to San Diego
I had about an hour to spend wandering around terminal A before our flight began to board, and upon arriving at the gate I found that nearly everyone was crowding around the boarding door before they even called for zone 1.
That meant having to slash my way through the masses as soon as they started the boarding process, which is something I don’t particularly enjoy doing. I normally would have waited until the lines thinned out a bit before getting on the plane myself, but I wanted to be one of the first ones on so that I could get some unobstructed pics of the Stretch Seating up front.
My first impressions of the Frontier Airlines A319 Stretch seat
Unfortunately, many of the front seats were already occupied by the time I boarded the plane so I wasn’t able to get the pics I wanted. Oh well. These “Stretch” seats up front are the exact same seats you’ll find in Frontier Airlines A319 economy, with only a marginal amount of added leg room. That’s it. Frontier could certainly learn a thing or two from the Spirit Airlines A321neo Big Front Seat.
The departure out of Denver
It was a short taxi out to 25L on this beautifully clear morning in Denver, and we were off and up and over the Rocky Mountains in just minutes. This departure was butter-smooth compared to the jostling we dealt with on our arrival into DEN the day priror, but the views were just as stunning.
Here’s a video I shot of our departure off of runway 25, and pics will follow below:
And now on with the pics:
How comfortable are the Stretch seats?
I chose to pass on the in-flight snacks this morning (nothing is free on Frontier, by the way) and instead just took the opportunity to catch up on the sleep that I had lost the night before. Yeah, it was a horribly uncomfortable nap, but I managed as best I could.
Edit from future me: the new version of these seats (which you can see in my Frontier A320 Stretch seat review), are a little more comfortable. And they look a lot better.
The arrival into San Diego
Despite the weather being crystal clear all the way to southern California, we arrived in San Diego under a rather thick marine layer that is typical in these parts this time of year. It was so gloomy out that I actually felt sorry for the tourists onboard who were coming to San Diego for a vacation.
But no matter – that marine layer always burns off by mid morning and they days always end up being nice. This day was no exception. It turned into a beautifully clear early-summer day just two hours later.
So that’s it for this trip, and now I can say that I’ve flown on Frontier Airlines! I realize that’s something that only true airline nerds such as myself can be proud of, but I’m happy to be able to add another airline to my flight log.
Is Frontier Airlines good? Absolutely! The two flights I had with them in the past two days were nice – nothing amazing, though I didn’t expect anything otherwise. Think of them as a carbon-copy of Spirit. They both offer pretty much an identical experience and are nearly as good as any of the legacy carriers. I’d fly either again without question.
