Frontier/Southest

I was going to book Frontier since they have 69.00 both ways but when I selected it, I was shown seating assignments for $12 (24 round trip) a person and also the baggage fee of $20 a bag ($40 round trip).

Flight from Chichago to Orlando: 828.00
Seats: 144.00
bags: 200.00
bus to airport (no parking fee) 200.00
total 1372.00

For a family of 6 that really added up fast. Do you have to pay for seating assignments? If not, so they try seat people with who the reservations were booked with? We have 4 children.

Southwest is closer to home but higher price
Flight Milwaukee to Orlando 1584.00
Seats 0
Bags 0
parking/gas 120.00
time saved about 1.5 hours for closer airport

I just don't know which is a better deal with travel times and hassle...

I would ALWAYS choose Southwest over Frontier. Bags free, easy to change a ticket without change fees, super friendly employees. I happen to like the boarding process. Even if you purchase your seats (on Frontier) there is no guarantee that you will end up in those seats. All contract of carriages say that the airline has to get you from point A to point B. Buried in the teeny tiny print is a disclaimer about not guaranteeing specific seats, even if you pay for them. With Southwest, once your bottom is in the seat, it is pretty much yours (some exceptions but rare)

pixxi said:

I was going to book Frontier since they have 69.00 both ways but when I selected it, I was shown seating assignments for $12 (24 round trip) a person and also the baggage fee of $20 a bag ($40 round trip).

Flight from Chichago to Orlando: 828.00
Seats: 144.00
bags: 200.00
bus to airport (no parking fee) 200.00
total 1372.00

For a family of 6 that really added up fast. Do you have to pay for seating assignments? If not, so they try seat people with who the reservations were booked with? We have 4 children.

Southwest is closer to home but higher price
Flight Milwaukee to Orlando 1584.00
Seats 0
Bags 0
parking/gas 120.00
time saved about 1.5 hours for closer airport

I just don't know which is a better deal with travel times and hassle...

Click to expand...

If you want to sit together yes pay for seat assignments. With six people that two sets of three seats that need to be empty for you to sit together. People who pay to choose seats are not going to want to switch with you because you could have paid but opted not to. Although in theory no seat is guaranteed, in the hundreds of flights I've taken well over 95% I have ended up in the seats I selected. The others usually were aircraft switches at the last minute that you can't predict. And even then the airline tried their best to get us together.

I would definitely choose a carrier that lets you assign seats for a small fee. Southwest currently charges an optional $12.50/each way/each passenger fee for Early Bird check-in, which gets you a chance to board earlier than some others (but by no means among the very first). So you'd still end up paying for just a chance of a good group of seats at SWA, or not pay and deal with being separated and/or in terrible seats. I've never had my assigned seats taken from me on any assigned-seat carrier- that only happens if there's an emergency such as your flight being cancelled. Sure SWA has 2 free check-in bags. I took advantage of that on my last trip, and our bags were lost until late the next day (the flight was also very late). Save yourselves the hassle and fly Frontier.