Neil Manus

What are yalls estimate on how much these are worth? I have 50K that I am having a hard time using. I would love for someone to take them off my hands, but im afraid they don't have much value b/c of the frequent sales.

How do you maximize value?

nobodyherebutme

The best redemption rate I have seen lately is 10,000 miles for a $249 flight. But with the frequent sales, it's been more like 10,000 miles for a $59 or $39 flight.

Mtek

Fearing my miles expiring I did a quick calculation for a 1 way from PHL to Cun (I have a ticket booked w/ Southwest already)
Sat/Sun is 25,000 PP Mon is 15,000 PP based on the cash cost of the tickets the points are worth 0.005 ea
That's minus the $50 +/- fees I'll pay either way, I'd also have to add bag fees to the total, which I'm not paying on SW

milemission

Could the miles be used in other things beside flights? Thanks!

rsteinmetz70112

^Yes,

But the options are limited. Look at the Frontier website for rental car and other options

Mtek

Ironically Frontier was the 2nd card I applied for since they fly local out of Trenton for me. What a miscalculation, the Trenton flights that I was interested in, were all basically Tues/Thursday and it was nearly impossible to fit them into my schedule.
After holding out hope for about 2 years I finally converted them to Radisson hotel nights, found on their partners page.
They emailed me vouchers of 25,000 points each night and I called and booked the hotel myself, A redemption rate of about .008 for $200 night room. Not the best but better than letting them sit and rot

RustyC

I'm rethinking the Frontier miles more positively in light of experience with Spirit. Spirit has the super-teasy RTs as low as 5K miles if you're a cardholder (and you might get a lot of that from card spend alone) BUT they're only good maybe one-third of the year (lowest off-peak times) and availability is sometimes tough.

The times you can use the reduced miles also happen to be the very same times they have to do their lowest rock-bottom fares. Did a $46 RT to TPA last weekend that included a 2.5K mile bonus and an opportunity to get 1K Avis miles on a $25.50 car rent. Maybe I should have planned ahead to go to CUN on miles instead.

YMMV but with F9 miles the award levels are higher, but much more of the year is covered. Also, from ATL their non-stops often get sales, but connections (e.g. places like PDX and BIS) tend to be much less of a deal and are good possible uses for awards.

Sometimes the F9 award flight is effectively a positioning flight to the other side of the country. Just did an Alaska trip that cost 12.5K DL miles, a $81 OW on JetBlue and 10K F9 miles, all to sidestep availability or mileage-needed obstacles. It was a bit of a kludge, but I got the dates I wanted (weekend after Labor Day) even though it took a toolbox to do it. F9 awards also could come in handy for positioning flights to a west-coast gateway.

So I'm slowly warming up to them.