First-class seating has come to budget airlines.
Frontier Airlines this month announced that it will introduce new, wider first-class seats in its first two rows in late 2025. Renderings show seats with extra cushioning and an extra-wide middle armrest. Frontier tells Fast Company the new seats will replace banks of three seats with two, and they’ll be available on its entire fleet, which it hopes to have completed by the end of 2025.
“We’ve listened to customers, and they want more—more premium options, like first-class seating, attainable seat upgrades, more free travel for their companions, and the ability to use miles on more than just airfare,” Frontier CEO Barry Biffle said in a statement.
It’s part of larger trend toward premium seating across budget airlines. In March, Frontier announced “UpFront Plus” seating in its first two rows. The thin-framed seats were skinny but came with extra legroom and a guaranteed blocked-off middle seat. In July, Spirit Airlines introduced what it calls the “Big Front Seat,” a wider seat with more legroom and no middle seat; that same month, Southwest Airlines said it would end open seating, paving the way for the company to charge more for additional legroom.
So-called ancillary fees in which airlines upcharge for specific seats or checked bags have become a big business. Five major and low-cost airlines raked in $12.4 billion in fees from 2018 to 2023, a recent Senate report found, and lawmakers grilled the airlines over the practice earlier this month.
While some consumers might feel tricked by premium add-ons that inflate the price of an airline ticket far beyond what they expected by the time they reach checkout, adding in first-class seating could play differently since flyers expect to pay more for the experience. First class on a budget airline might seem like an oxymoron, but for airlines like Frontier, it represents an upcharge its customers could be more than happy to pay for.
