Frontier Airlines has rolled back a controversial ‘turn only’ policy – at least partially – after flight attendants at the Denver-based ultra-low-cost carrier threatened to go on strike over the business strategy.
The ‘turn only’ policy was introduced early last year in an attempt to slash costs at the financially underperforming airline by dramatically reducing the amount of money the airline spent on hotels and layover expenses for pilots and flight attendants.
A turn is a term coined to describe when aircrew fly to a destination from their primary base and then fly straight back. They might do this two or three times during their shift but always finish back at their base.
Traditionally, however, Frontier’s flight attendants have worked multi-day trips in which they fly from city to city and stay in hotels overnight before eventually finishing back at their primary base.
By working with a turn-only model, Frontier no longer had to pay for hotels for pilots and flight attendants, as well as the associated transport costs. Flight attendants were, of course, also no longer getting per diem payments for overnight hotel stays.
The Association of Flight Attendants (AFA-CWA), which represents crew members at Frontier, had complained that many flight attendants had seen their wages plummet by as much as 20% following the introduction of a turn-only policy.
Why is it called a ‘turn’?
Very simply, a turn or turnaround flight is so-called because flight attendants fly to the destination and almost immediately turn around and fly straight back from where they came from. They don’t get off the plane, they don’t incur any layover expenses, and they don’t get to stay in a hotel in another city.
Turn-only policies are very common at European low-cost carriers such as EasyJet, Ryanair, and Vueling, with only a very small number of trips incurring an overnight stay–this is very much the exception, not the norm.
Ryanair attracts flight attendants with what it describes as an ‘industry-leading’ roster pattern that sees flight attendants work five days straight and then get three days off. This allows them to maintain a great work-life balance and make commitments at home.
To make matters worse, many flight attendants ‘commuted’ from other cities were spending their own money to stay in hotels at their primary base between flights.
The union scoured the Railway Labor Act (which also governs labor relations for aircrew) for some sort of solution and found an “obscure and little-used provision” that could effectively force Frontier to negotiate with the union or face the threat of strike action.
In September 2024, flight attendants voted overwhelmingly in favor of strike action, and by January 2025, the two sides were actively discussing the future of the turn-only policy.
Frontier agreed to reinstate multi-day trips to the same level they had been removed–the union says the real threat of a strike was crucial in securing this concession.
“The company, so far, has held up its promise to return more multi-duty trips into the system. We have evidence of this not only in the data that we received but also in data that AFA can easily monitor, such as the number of hotel rooms in the entire system each month,” the union told its members in a recent memo.
“In August 2024, Frontier had 6,442 hotel rooms booked, and in June 2025, has 13,138 hotel rooms. That’s more than double the number of rooms,” the memo continued.
The union says it will continue to monitor hotel booking trends, and if they start to fall, then they’ll “rekindle this fight.”
That’s not to say that flight attendants or the union are entirely happy with how everything has turned out. Many of these multi-day trips are not allegedly productive, but improving the flight attendant contract is still an ongoing effort–negotiations have been taking place on that front since December 2023.
Frontier did not respond to a request for comment.
