Our Flight Left Early, The Airline Lied About It, And Now We Are Being Charged Over $1,000 For It

Location: Atlanta, Georgia

Almost 3 weeks ago, my friend and I were scheduled to have a cross country flight departing from the Atlanta Airport which is a few hours drive from where we were originally. For the sake of this post, we will be calling the airline we flew with Fraudtier Airlines. They originally delayed our flight by an hour and sent us that update early on the departure day. Then when we were half way through our drive, they sent a new message that our plane was now delayed by only 30 minutes. We hurried through the airport and made it to the gate at about 9:29pm. The last updated boarding time that they officially released said that boarding would close at 9:31pm. When we got to the gate, another guy was already there talking to the gate agent. Once their conversation ended, the gate agent left and I waited at the desk for a minute to see if there was anyone that I could talk to about boarding, but no one came back to the desk. Then I heard behind me that the guy who did make it to the desk was talking to 5 other passengers who had also missed the flight. We walked up to them and, apparently, they had closed the gates at least 20 minutes before we got there, meaning they closed the gates at about 9:09pm which they shouldn't have because that's 15 minutes earlier than the original 9:24pm ending boarding time when we first bought the tickets. One of the other missed passengers also mentioned that the gate agent was incredibly rude and said when confronted about the early closure, "Well do you want to be the reason that everyone misses this flight?" In total, at least 8 other people, that we know of, missed this flight because they closed the gate so early without any warning. The first guy said that the gate agent told him to speak to rebooking, so 8 of us, including my friend and I, decided to go down to rebooking together as a group to strengthen our case. When we got to rebooking, the Fraudtier agent said that there was another flight the next morning that we could take and that that was our only option. The agent said that rebooking the tickets would cost $452 for the both of us. We said that we were not happy with this because they left early causing us and at least 8 other people to miss the flight, and the agent responded that all he could do was put a note in our file explaining the situation and that we were forced to rebook due to the airline. We agreed to have him put in the note, booked the flight because we had no other options, and went back through TSA to now spend the night in the airport. This whole situation caused us to be in the airport for a total of 14 hours which was pretty detrimental since my friend has many different medical conditions making this extremely difficult for her to do.

Through Airtags that we had put into both of our checked bags ahead of time, we were able to figure out that our bags had made it onto the tarmac, but not onto the plane. As a part of our rebooking fee, our bags were supposed to be held overnight and put on our new flight the next morning so they would arrive with us. Instead of doing that, they put them on the next flight that led to our original layover destination, Vegas, and then onto our original second flight that we were no longer able to catch since we were now going to LAX. This resulted in our bags getting to our final destination 6 hours before us. By the time we finally got there, everyone who worked for Fraudtier had already left meaning no one could get us our bags since they were in holding. They did inform us prior to our arrival that they were holding our bags, but did not any information on how to get them or that they would be closed by the time we got there, so we wasted over an hour calling several people trying to get them. We unfortunately found out that only direct employees of that airline had access to where they stored. That meant that we would need to come back the next day to get our bags. Having no other choice, we had to book a hotel near the airport since our Airbnb was 2 hours away and we were not staying overnight in another airport. This was also deeply detrimental to my friend since, due to her medical conditions, she has a lot of necessary prescription medications many of which could only be packed in a checked bag. This deprived her of her meds for much longer than what she had prepared for. This situation was even more frustrating since we had called Fraudtier Airlines’ baggage earlier when we originally found out that our bags were already there several hours ahead of us, and they told us that we would still be able to pick them up, which was a lie.

As for our rental car that we also purchased through Fraudtier since they had a good deal, our car rental had been given away since we didn’t get there at the original time causing our original roughly $500, after fees and taxes, rental car to now be $1,000 since this new car was $200 more expensive. This was absolutely insane since after figuring out our new eta, we called the rental car company to check that we would still be able to get our original car at the same price about 6 hours later than the original time, and they said yes! When we confronted them about this, they said that since the car was booked through Fraudtier, there was nothing that they could do about it! Both companies just kept shifting blame, so in addition to the extra cost of a hotel, this whole experience has cost us well over $1,000 more than we were expecting through Fraudtier’s own mistakes and pushing that cost on to us. They also caused us to miss the first day and a half of our 5 day trip which really ruined our overall experience.

When we got back from our trip and called the Fraudtier number that we had gotten to try and get some money back, the agent on the phone looked into our case and said that there was nothing that we could do. According to them, the plane left at 10:25pm, which was the hour delayed time that we were originally planning for, and said that they didn't close the gates early. They said that we voluntarily chose to change our tickets which is a lie because we put that note in our file stating otherwise. I said that they did close the gate early and then they retorted they had no record of that and that they didn’t keep records of that. They said that all they had was what the Atlanta Airport reported. So essentially, they lied to us about us voluntarily rebooking our tickets and lied about the gate not closing early. Based on the time they said the plane left, we were definitely there at the gate when they said boarding was happening since they are officially sticking with the hour delay time. This call was recorded by them and I was told that this phone call was put in our file.

What we would like to know is are there any legal actions we can take to get any of our money back from any part of this experience since nothing we have tried has worked so far. The only way we can think to prove that they closed the gates early is to get the security camera footage from the airport, so does anyone know how to proceed with either getting the security footage from the Atlanta Airport, getting the airport to hold the footage while we pursue further legal action, or what legal actions we even can take at this point?