As someone who represented Frontier at JFK last year, this seemed to happen to at least one person daily and the reason was frequently that the passengers didn’t purchase their tickets. That’s their policy. Purchase a new ticket with a different card or go to the airport and have someone call and read the card number to the counter agent while talking to frontier fraud customer service. Frontier ceased JFK operations on 10/5/26 due to “lack of profitability”
I would contact the credit card issuer and ask them why a legitimate transaction with their card is flagged as suspicious by Frontier. Let the credit card company investigate. Because aparently this can happen when you continue to use this card, so this is a problem for you as a cardholder as well as the cardissuer.
Badly run companies fall into this trap every time.
Problem: 100% real (in this case, credit card fraud)
Solution: really stupid
If one confronts these morons, every time they'll defend the really stupid solution by repeating the importance of the problem. "We've been experiencing FRAUD" is an ATV they think they can ride anywhere they want to go. Sadly, ATVs flip over really easily.
"Let's cancel all bookings made on a card not in the traveller's name, booked in a different city from the trip's origin/destination." Close your eyes and picture the meeting where this was discussed, by people who meet for a living. One can see the momentum build. The person everyone's afraid of supports the plan and it's airborne.
But here's the problem:
Suppose a study demonstrated what colour vehicle was most often used by terrorist bombers, for sake of argument suppose the colour is blue, and the study is 100% competent, the conclusion 100% true fact. It's tempting to some, isn't it, to see the fact as important, actionable, meaningful, useful. Especially under pressure to solve "the problem! the problem!". Competents would recognize the flaw in the logic, but that's not everyone, is it?
Frontier deserves to end up where this stupidity leads. Its passengers mostly don't.
It might be stupid but Frontier has the data and made the decision. For Frontier particularly (kindly, not a lot of business travel, ahem), the ratio of fraud to legitimate examples of this situation is probably high. Considering their margins, even if it affects 20 'legit' tickets for every fraud charge back it stops, it's probably rational to refuse these bookings. I agree they should automate it in some fashion.
Sounds like Frontier doesn't deserve the business.
Go to the airport to buy a ticket?? What country and what century are we in? lol
United Airlines had this policy 25 years ago when there was a explosion of the number of people having credit, and debit cards, and skyrocketing credit card fraud when one's card number and expiration date were printed on credit card receipts and monthly statements.
Remember the simultaneous explosion in home paper shredders?
The way UA handles this now is for the cardholder to include the passenger on the cardholder's Mileage Plus profile. The cardholder books the reservation for the passenger so there's no issue of the passenger having to prove it was an authorized purchase.