Upon returning from a trip to Michigan I hopped on my Frontier flight and noticed that I was flying on a Grizzly Bear. “Neat,” I thought, “I like bears.”
You see, Frontier puts a critter on the tail/nose of each of their planes. Mammals, birds, marine life, each plane is different. Typically I take a photo of who I’m flying with and tweet “I trust you with my life, [critter].”
Naturally, I trusted Clark W (a play on the name Clark W Griswold from National Lampoon) with my life.
“I trust you with my life, Clark W.”
— Patrick Barron (@BlueBarronPhoto) – December 8, 2025
Original tweet: https://twitter.com/BlueBarronPhoto/status/1998154259628740649
Image courtesy of Frontier’s X account
It wasn’t until a day later that I realized the bear on the side of the plane looked familiar, like a bear I was used to seeing in Grand Teton. I pulled up one of my photos of 1063 and couldn’t believe what I was seeing.
“OH MY GOD CLARK W IS MY PHOTO. FRONTIER BOUGHT MY STOCK PHOTO AND IT’S ON A PLANE NOW. A PLANE I FLEW ON 🥹”
— Patrick Barron (@BlueBarronPhoto) – December 9, 2025
Original tweet: https://twitter.com/BlueBarronPhoto/status/1998412055888662720
MY PHOTO IS ON A FRONTIER PLANE. THE AIRLINE I FLY PROBABLY 80% OF THE TIME.
How did this come to happen you might ask? Well, I host a lot of photos on stock photography websites. Stock sites like Shutterstock, Getty, and Adobe Stock are a nice home for a lot of “good not great” photos that slowly earn me dollars at a time. At some point, an artist over at Frontier decided to buy/use my photo and now it graces the skies of Detroit, Denver, and Vegas (the only places Rachel and myself have seen it).
Fun facts about the actual bear!
-It’s a female whose tag number is 1063.
-She has a lot of nicknames amongst locals, one of which is “Fritter”
-She was recently a first time mother! Two of her cubs died and she abandoned the third. She was not a good first-time mother.
-She frequents a lot of the same areas of the park that the famous 399 once roamed.
-I most commonly see her just eating grass in the same fields.
-As of October 2025, the abandoned cub is still alive.
1063, you beautiful cow bear
If you are travelling and happen to see this Frontier plane, I’d love to hear about it and see!
BlueBarronPhoto 