Fed up with fighting for elbow space on that airplane armrest? Need a little more personal space while cruising at altitude? Frontier Airlines feels your pain, and is addressing it. Its new UpFront Plus seating plans guarantee that the middle seat next to you will be empty.
This upgraded seating in the first two rows gives more leg and elbow room and ensures you’ll be the first off the aircraft and receive in-flight service. The pricing starts at $49 per person per flight segment during the introductory period, April 10 through 30. The new seats can be booked for flights that take off starting on April 10, and you must purchase them by March 20.
The UpFront Plus seating joins the Premium and Preferred categories as an upgrade from Standard seating. In Premium, passengers get extra legroom, and in Preferred, seats are located toward the front of the aircraft for quick deboarding. Since UpFront Plus only covers the first two rows, the upgrades will be quickly snatched up.
As frequent flyers, we can only wonder what happens when a flight is overbooked. Will gate agents still respect that middle seat’s emptiness? And will there be any in-row squabbles about who gets to pull up their armrest and, well, flow into the middle seat? Time will tell.