Yuck: Frontier Airlines Passenger Discovers Urine Soaked Backpack

Here’s an interesting story, as flagged by PYOK, which raises the question of what liability airlines have for the personal belongings of passengers.

Frontier passenger makes disgusting backpack discovery

A Reddit user posed a question on behalf of their sister, based on what happened on a recent Frontier Airlines flight. Specifically, she flew on June 9, 2025, on flight F94077, from Seattle (SEA) to Dallas (DFW).

During the flight, the woman stored her backpack underneath the seat in front of her. At the end of the flight, she grabbed the backpack, only to discover that it was wet. When she tried to dry it off in the aircraft lavatory, the paper towels came out yellow, so “she’s 99% sure the person sitting in the seat in front of her peed during the flight and it leaked onto her backpack.”

She went to the gate right after deplaning to try and report it, and the staff “basically brushed her off,” telling her to go to the ticket counter. She went there and met with a supervisor, while “literally carrying around pee soaked paper towels as evidence while getting bounced around the airport trying to find someone who will take her seriously.”

Eventually, a manager told her that they had to call the general manager, because “nothing like this has happened before,” so the manager didn’t know what to do. Eventually she was told that there was nothing the airline could do, and that she needed to “settle it with the passenger.”

The Reddit user concludes that this whole thing feels “so gross and wrong,” and that “a bodily fluid soaks her personal belongings, and she’s being told she’s on her own?”

What we can learn from this Frontier backpack incident

Airlines generally have a lot of liability when it comes to transporting passengers, so where does this incident fall, and is there anything that the passenger could’ve done differently?

To start, Frontier Airlines’ contract of carriage specifically states that the airline has no liability for situations like this:

“Frontier will not be liable for loss or damage to carry-on baggage unless such damage is caused by Frontier’s or its agent’s negligence, which does not include damage resulting from turbulence, shifting of items during flight, or ordinary handling, including placing the baggage in overhead compartments or under seats.”

The way I view it, there are two main issues here — the timing, and the fact that this happened on Frontier.

For one, the timing was kind of complicated. It seems this discovery was made at the end of the flight, then the passenger went into the aircraft lavatory to clean the bag, and then the passenger went to see a gate agent. It sounds like this was never addressed onboard, when the facts could’ve more easily been established.

Presumably if the passenger in front of her had an accident, there would also be evidence of that on the seat. For example, are we sure it was urine, and not an apple juice spill? I don’t see any mention of odor, but rather, just of color.

I’m also a little confused about the logistics here. It must have been a waterfall of urine to somehow make its way from the seat in front to the bag underneath it, given how seats are built. Did this otherwise go totally unnoticed?

The other bigger picture issue here when it comes to these kinds of situations is flying Frontier. For one, the airline exclusively uses outsourced ground staff, so no one is really empowered to do all that much. It’s something to be aware of when flying Frontier, in terms of getting a resolution to an issue (not that legacy airlines are exactly known for their exceptional customer service).

Then there’s this comment from a Frontier flight attendant on the Reddit post, which is… quite something:

As an FA, Frontier doesn’t consider anything a biohazard unless it visibly contains blood (even if there is a reasonable possibility of it containing blood, such as urine, feces, or vomit).

We also don’t have cleaners. FAs pick up trash from the seatback pockets and GAs are supposed to do everything else. Most times if there is stuff on the seats they we can’t get them to do anything. The times they’ve had to clean them, due to something extreme like vomit, all they’ve done is lightly wipe the seat with some paper towels and maybe some basic cleaning spray.

Just saying, Frontier doesn’t care about the cleanliness of our planes.

Ugh, it’s nice to know that the plane won’t probably even be cleaned properly, even after this incident was reported.

Bottom line

A Frontier Airlines passenger made an unpleasant discovery on a recent flight. At the end of the flight, she found that her backpack was soaked in what appeared to be urine. The airline said there was nothing they could do to help, and suggested she’d have to take it up with the other passenger (even though they had all deplaned at this point).

Ultimately the airline was just following its own policy. Perhaps the more disgusting discovery is the extent to which Frontier reportedly doesn’t clean its planes when there’s some sort of a serious cleanliness issue.

What do you make of this Frontier urine incident?