U.S. DISTRICT COURT DENIES PLAINTIFFS’ LATEST MOTIONS IN CASE AGAINST FRONTIER AIRLINES REGARDING PANDEMIC RELATED REFUNDS
April 21, 2022
On March 1, 2022, the United States District Court for the District of Colorado (the “Court”) issued a decision in the matter of in re Frontier Airlines Litigation denying the plaintiff-passengers’ motion to reopen the case against Frontier Airlines,
In 2021, several passengers who booked tickets with Frontier filed suit after their flights were cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The passengers alleged that Frontier had not fulfilled its obligations to provide refunds for the cancelled flights as it merely provided travel vouchers for future travel that expired 90 days after issuance and were therefore unusable during the pandemic due to travel restrictions, and that in some instances, Frontier had attempted to dissuade passengers from obtaining refunds. The passengers also alleged that in some cases Frontier encouraged passengers to preemptively cancel their own flights in exchange for future travel credit and an additional voucher, but Frontier failed to disclose that if the passengers had simply waited for Frontier to cancel the flights, the passengers would have been entitled to a full monetary refund. Some passengers also alleged that after they preemptively cancelled their Frontier flights, Frontier did not provide them with any refunds, travel credits, or other means of compensation. In initial proceedings, the Court determined that Frontier’s Contract of Carriage (the “Contract”) did not require that monetary refunds be provided to passengers who cancel their own flights prior to departure, and therefore, the Court found no breach on the part of Frontier for not providing refunds to passengers who had cancelled their own flights. The Court also reasoned that no “prevention or hinderance” was evident in Frontier’s actions of allegedly emailing passengers to dissuade them from obtaining refunds because the passengers had failed to explain what term of the Contract, they were impeded from performing in their Complaint. Accordingly, the Court initially dismissed the passengers’ breach of contract claims with prejudice, a decision which the passengers sought to have the Court reconsider. The Court again dismissed the passengers’ motions as it found that (1) the new allegations alleged against Frontier were available to the passengers when they filed their earlier complaint in 2021 and the passengers provided no reason as to why the allegations were left out of the complaint initially, (2) there was no error in the Court’s previous order dismissing the passengers’ claims with prejudice, and (3) the passengers would not suffer manifest injustice as alleged if the case was not reopened.
If you have any questions, please contact Evelyn Sahr (esahr@eckertseamans.com 202-659-6622) or Drew Derco (dderco@eckertseamans.com 202-659-6665).
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