Urgent Warning Issued For Frontier Airlines Flyers

Online scammers are targeting Frontier Airlines passengers in a sophisticated phishing campaign that has resulted in some flyers entering their credit card details under false pretenses. Online discourse suggests that it is a wider problem affecting large numbers of the airline's customers, suggesting a major breach. In order to keep its passengers informed, Frontier has set up a dedicated website page.

Elsewhere online, affected flyers have been taking to social media and message boards to their stories, highlighting the convincing nature of the emails that they received from individuals or parties claiming to be Frontier. Given the large amounts of data that such carriers process, major airlines take cybersecurity very seriously. However, as this and other instances show, they are not fully immune.

Frontier Airlines Has Alerted Its Flyers To A Phishing Scam

A new page on the Frontier Airlines website tells passengers in no uncertain terms that the US-based ultra-low-cost carrier is " aware of an active email phishing campaign targeting our customers ." Per View From The Wing, the emails claim that they need the user's bank details in order to process a refund due to duplicate ticketing , saying that " the settlement batch for this reservation has already closed ."

With flyers simply having to enter their card details in order to obtain the promised refund, some have unfortuntately fallen victim to the scam. With the emails reportedly including corresponding confirmation numbers for the booking(s) in question, they are clearly convincing, and also a sign that Frontier has suffered a major breach. However, the airline does not send such emails, and it confirms on its site that:

"Frontier Airlines does not email customers requesting flight, reservation, payment, or detail information. Do not respond to any email seeking this type of information."

"Frontier Airlines does not email customers requesting flight, reservation, payment, or detail information. Do not respond to any email seeking this type of information."

The Human Side: Many Passengers Claim To Have Been Impacted

For passengers who have unfortunately gone through with submitting their payment details via one of the scam emails, Frontier advises that they should " your card issuer or financial institution ." The airline has also advised users who have received such an email not to click the links or directly. Instead, those wishing to amend their reservations should use Frontier's app or website.

On the human side of this story, the scam has lit up the message boards on , with a thread on r/frontierairlines seeing many users detail their experiences . Multiple customers touched upon the convincing nature of the emails, with one saying they " put in all my info but right before I pressed continue I googled it then realized it’s a scam ." Another noted that their email inbox's spam filter didn't even catch it.

In any case, users are acting cautiously, with some locking their cards even if they only did as much as click the link. The extent of this caution is evidenced by phone hold times for banks and Frontier, with one commenter saying that they had to wait two hours to get through to their bank and three for Frontier. As one put it, " I've been in cyber defense for eight years: this is the most convincing email I've seen ." Simple Flying has reached out to Frontier Airlines for futher information.

Such Scams Are Rare, But Major US Airlines Are Not Totally Immune

As it happens, Frontier Airlines is not the only major US carrier to fall victim to a phishing scam in recent years, with American Airlines suffering a similar fate back in July of 2022. As Simple Flying subsequently reported in September of that year, this particular data breach did not initially directly impact passengers . Rather, employee emails were compromised, with hackers thus able to access passenger data.

That scam seems to have operated on a smaller scale than the current campaign targeting Frontier Airlines and its passengers, with AA saying at the time that only " a very small number " of customers' data was exposed. It added that none of the compromised data had been misused. Furthermore, the data was not financial but personal, concerning things like their names, addresses, and phone numbers.