The wide seats of the old Midwest are of course long gone, and you probably hadn't seen them in PHL in a few years anyway. There are a lot of the same ground employees as you had at Midwest, and a fair (but not huge) number of legacy YX inflight people are with F9. So some continuity, but a different airline.

Frontier is generally pretty aggressive on price, which is helpful. They also have cheaper bag fees and lower change fees than most competitors, no seat assignment fees and no fees to call reservations. All those things are helpful when you're paying for things yourself.

Frontier's three-tierd Air Fares system give you unique access to various perks for a nominal upcharge. If you're paying for bags and/or a few other things like DIRECTV, it is sometimes cheaper to buy a Classic fare than buy the cheapest economy fare and pay for the added items a la carte.

The FF program gives you elite status at ten round trips or 15,000 miles in a calendar year, and the miles do not expire as long as you have activity at least every two years. With elite status you no longer pay bag fees, and get perks like bonus miles, free DIRECTV, advance exit row, free upgrades, free drinks, etc. Top-tier elite status is twenty round trips, which brings more perks and comes a lot easier than higher-tier status on DL or US.

Frontier has STRETCH seating on all aircraft larger than 50 seats (the E170's are in the procees of installation) which is conventional width but much roomier leg room. Especially on the E-jets the 2x2 STRETCH section is nearly as comfortable as conventional domesitc narrowbody F. It's not bad on the Airbus, but very nice on the E-jets. STRECH is a $25 upgrade fee for all travelers, free at check in for low-tier elite FF members, and free at booking at top-tier FF members.

If you're not based in MKE, you'll be connecting here fairly often. MKE is a much easier airport to navigate for connections than DL or US use.


So what are some downsides?

--75 destinations pales in comparison to what DL and US offer, so it's more limited in where you can earn miles and where you can redeem miles.

--No FF partners (which is something they said they are looking to change, but nothing yet) means no overseas FF travel.

--No conventional F, and while STRETCH is nice and much cheaper to upgrade to, it's not a separate cabin with wider seats.


Hope this helps!