Frontier Airlines EarlyReturns - Email to Summit Members about changes to award redemptions

Dear valued Summit member,
We don’t say it enough, but thank you again, for your encouragement and confidence in Frontier Airlines during these trying times. We humbly acknowledge that without the commitment and support of you, our most loyal customers, we would not be here today.
As you are aware, the historically high and unpredictable cost of fuel has created unprecedented challenges for the industry, resulting in several carriers ceasing operation altogether. We are determined to meet these challenges and are evaluating every aspect of our operation to reduce costs and drive towards profitability. As a result, we have had to make some tough decisions. We prefer not to make these choices, but we are committed to doing everything it takes to survive and successfully weather these hard times; for the sake of our employees and customers alike.
While we must implement the following changes to our EarlyReturns mileage program, we will continue to waive all change fees and redemption fees for Summit members. Please read below for general program changes
For award tickets issued on or after September 15, 2008, the following fees and policy changes will apply:

EarlyReturns Fee Changes (Waived for Summit Members)
Award tickets will incur a $25 redemption fee*
Award tickets issued within 14 days of travel will incur a $75 expedite fee* (waived for EarlyReturns PLUS+ and Weekend Web Fares)
Change itinerary: As long as an award seat is available on your desired flight, you can change the time, date, passenger name, or city pairs for a $75 change fee* (previously $35)
Cancelled itinerary: If you no longer want to fly on the original ticket booked, you may cancel your itinerary and redeposit the miles for $75 redeposit fee* (previously $35)
*all fees are non-refundable

EarlyReturns New Redemption Levels (effective 9/15/08):
Travel within the contiguous U.S. or to/from Canada
15,000 miles one-way
20,000 miles round-trip
30,000 miles EarlyReturns PLUS+ one-way**
40,000 miles EarlyReturns PLUS+ round-trip**

Travel to/from Alaska or Mexico
20,000 miles one-way
30,000 miles round-trip
45,000 miles EarlyReturns PLUS+ one-way**
55,000 miles EarlyReturns PLUS+ round-trip**

Travel to/from Costa Rica
40,000 miles round-trip
65,000 miles EarlyReturns PLUS+ round-trip**

** EarlyReturns PLUS+ is our additional award seat option available to Ascent and Summit members only

Minimum mileage value: Segments flown between Denver and Aspen (ASE), Grand Junction (GJT) or Colorado Springs (COS), will earn 250 miles. Segments flown between all other destinations will earn actual mileage value.
In an effort to ease this transition, you can still redeem award tickets at the 'old' mileage rate until September 15, 2008. If you're shy of the minimum mileage threshold, you can purchase miles to top off your account at a great discount! ** Visit the Buy Miles section of our website for details and directions on how to save up to 30% on the purchase of EarlyReturns miles.
Again, I cannot stress enough how important you are to the future of Frontier Airlines. We are committed to maintaining one of the most competitive frequent flyer programs in the industry and will do our best to earn your business every time you fly with us. Further, as a Summit member, we will continue to create ways to make Frontier Airlines your clear choice in air travel. We look forward to serving you on your next Frontier flight.
Best Regards,

Jim Young
Vice President - Marketing, Sales and Distribution

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Big thumbs down on this one. Still better than others but a huge devaluation.

Terrible. Maybe it truly is time to make the switch to Southworst.

I've switched my earlyreturns itinerary to different times/dates in the past, and have never paid the $35 they quote in the letter. So I'm not sure what the deal is with that.

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8310/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Also, I like how the CEO deflects the bad news down to a VP.

I am 5k away from a Summit requal or 11 segments from UA 2p with not much travel expected for the rest of this and next year. I am thinking I should requalify for Summit to avoid these fees but rewarding this change with more flights doesn't feel right.

Also, I like how the CEO deflects the bad news down to a VP.


Menke is on a well deserved vacation right now. He hasn't sent anything out for a while.

Can you use Frontier miles for business class upgrades on AirTran? This might be a good way for me to dump my F9 miles.

Agreed that the mileage increase stinks, every change/fee that they have implemented so far has not impacted Summit members, but this one will.

The one bonus that I see on this however, is that it appears the $35.00 cancel/redeposit fee (which Summit members were NOT exempt from previously) has been changed to $75.00, but Summit now seems to be exempt completely. It's not much, but it's something (I've paid that fee several times in the past). Can anyone confirm that this will be the case? The ability to make purely 'speculative' award bookings for Summit members could be nice, I ended up using 30k miles many times for "Plus" awards when I could have used 15K had I booked long in advance, so "guessing" and booking in advance may actually save me the 10k miles now, assuming I pay 20K instead of 30K. Of course, they may clarify and say that Summit is still going to have to pay the previous $35.00 fee.

C'mon Sean, throw the Summits a bone here and announce a new "limited pool" of low-mile awards like United, or a new "Pinnacle" level with this benefit associated.

Now that I made 2P on UA I was going to go back to spending some time on F9 iron getting my 9K miles with them up to 15K for reward.

Except that the extra 5K has been thrown in front of me - I'm forgetting about F9 completely and shooting for UA 1P instead (I'm only 16K EQMs away) since I only have about 20K air miles left in my business plan for this CY.

I have to fly no matter what and F9 goes to 95% of the same destinations as my UA flights. The UA fares have been on average only about $25/RT higher, even on a short notice situation.

In a time when they are struggling, it would've been nice to see F9 do a targeted status challenge or some other "Fly F9" promo to existing FF members with X,000 miles or maybe everyone or whatever - rather than throw an additional roadblock leading many to junk the existing miles. It isn't too late, they could still do this anyhow (F9 lurkers?) At the same time, I guess I am one less liability on their balance sheets and that is probably the only way they are seeing the world right now. I suppose I can't really blame them.

I just booked a 15K award ticket to exhaust my miles with F9. Thus concludes my Frontier "experiment." Although I like the DirecTV, the lack of E+, lack of reasonable schedule to where I want to go, and the mileage inflation will remove Frontier from my list of preferred carriers.

i have 58000 miles sitting in my frontier account and managed to find 2 tickets to PVR for February so we are going to go visit my parents while they are vacationing down there.

Hopefully F9 will still be running by then, but at least i found some availability!!!

I hope Frontier stays around, I really like them even though I have only flown with them one. But, I hope to add to my petty 4,880 mile with them.

Anyone have an idea of how long a transfer from e-Miles to Frontier takes? I did a deposit on 8/13, but so far no show at Frontier. And e-Miles says some airlines take 8-10 weeks!

I'm at 13800ish. I need that t500 o show up, then have time to transfer 1000 miles from Diners, in order to be able to use up my 15k for an award booking before it goes up. If the 500 from e-Miles takes too long, I then have to get another 5000!!! :eek:

Anyone know if the Frontier MC can be "churned" (get another bonus even if you got the bonus a few years ago and have held the card up till now)? Precious few opportunities for earning 1000's of Frontier miles here in the LAX area that I can see (given that I never stay at Marriott, and am "never" in the Denver area).

Anyone have an idea of how long a transfer from e-Miles to Frontier takes? I did a deposit on 8/13, but so far no show at Frontier. And e-Miles says some airlines take 8-10 weeks!

I'm at 13800ish. I need that t500 o show up, then have time to transfer 1000 miles from Diners, in order to be able to use up my 15k for an award booking before it goes up. If the 500 from e-Miles takes too long, I then have to get another 5000!!! :eek:

Anyone know if the Frontier MC can be "churned" (get another bonus even if you got the bonus a few years ago and have held the card up till now)? Precious few opportunities for earning 1000's of Frontier miles here in the LAX area that I can see (given that I never stay at Marriott, and am "never" in the Denver area).
I transferred from Amex and it was there within 2 days. I have no experience with either Diners or e-Miles. If Diners is as fast as Amex I would just give it a shot and see whether they show up faster. If things don't work out your worst case option is to buy missing miles. You can only do it in multiples of 1000 and the costs are including their fees :

1000 miles : 36.50$
2000 miles : 58.00$

Might be worth it if your miles don't make it fast enough.

Terrible. Maybe it truly is time to make the switch to Southworst.

Rapid Rewards does even less for a less than frequent flyer than F9.

None of this is good, but the biggest problem with Early Returns is that there is so little award inventory.

Back to UA....sigh.

I know everyones situation is different. For mine, Frontier just lost their competitive advantage to United Mileage plus. I am summit and Premier Exec. I fly quite a bit to PHX. If I receive 2,408 miles on United Round trip (with 100% bonus being premier exec) it takes roughly 11 trips to amount 26,488 miles (one free ticket). If I fly frontier to PHX I receive 1768 miles (50% bonus being summit). I takes roughly 12 round trips to have 21216 miles (one free ticket). I'll call that a wash, but for me Frontier's change puts them in the same as every one else's bucket.

I will still fly them but not as much. I will fly enough to get AScent this year while still maintaining Premier Exec. Next year I may have to put all my eggs in one basket and go for 1 K. Not sure.

Can you use Frontier miles for business class upgrades on AirTran? This might be a good way for me to dump my F9 miles.

No, you can't use miles to upgrade from a coach ticket on AirTran. But you can use EarlyReturns miles for a Business Class ticket. I just burned 40k from Frontier flying MCO-SEA the other weekend in Business Class. Booking it was a piece of cake!

I did find it interesting that I read the email here on FT about 3 hrs before I got the email myself...

Gotta love FT

RFTraveler ^:confused:

Wirelessly posted (BlackBerry8310/4.2.2 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102)

Also, I like how the CEO deflects the bad news down to a VP.

I am 5k away from a Summit requal or 11 segments from UA 2p with not much travel expected for the rest of this and next year. I am thinking I should requalify for Summit to avoid these fees but rewarding this change with more flights doesn't feel right.

Is there an echo in here??

Apparently there was a problem with my Blackberry. My apologies for the confusion. Regarding the deflection to the VP, Menke had just sent the cryptic email the week before (discussed elsewhere in the forum).

Is it time to deep six Frontier? They seem to be committing suicide with their FF program......its turned into a joke with NO availability.

I am not surprised. Most airlines are doing this now however I agree that this airline never seems to have any availability when trying to use your miles. I might just dump my miles!!!!

on frontier beware, after suggesting that i purchase a 1000 miles to get me over the 15000 miles mark for a free ticket....i fine NO availability anywhere anytime.....i am going after them for mis-representing the sale on false grounds. then i am going to just dump the miles, wont do business with a less than honest company.:td:

on frontier beware, after suggesting that i purchase a 1000 miles to get me over the 15000 miles mark for a free ticket....i fine NO availability anywhere anytime.....i am going after them for mis-representing the sale on false grounds. then i am going to just dump the miles, wont do business with a less than honest company.:td:
If you already had 14000 miles, you could have researched award availability before making your 1000-mile purchase, by checking for award avaiability as seprate outbound and inbound one-way awards. One-way awards come from the same inventory as round trip awards (despite costing more).

on frontier beware, after suggesting that i purchase a 1000 miles to get me over the 15000 miles mark for a free ticket....i fine NO availability anywhere anytime.....i am going after them for mis-representing the sale on false grounds. then i am going to just dump the miles, wont do business with a less than honest company.:td:

I think we've had this discussion before...

Wait we have:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showthread.php?t=852017

You know, FlyerTalk is a good resource. I'd use it in the future.