Thanks for posting that additional list of items, Blue. It's interesting to see some of the high-tier benefits of a huge international airline. I'm going to go through the list not to downplay or discredit them (they are all valid) but instead to look at the F9 program and wonder the extent to which some of them or are likely or reasonable for someone like Frontier to offer
Originally Posted by
BlueHorseShoe2000
4) United has hubs at LAX and SFO and thus a much larger West Coast network than Frontier. This can help in cases where non-stop flights to DEN are sold-out/cancelled or if you need to make multiple stops.
5) United is part of the Star Alliance and as a result had a very robust global route network. While most of your travel is domestic, this can help a great deal when flying overseas for vacation, securing up-grades, etc. Frontier has nothing.
Those two are not matters of policy but more about the nuts-and-bolts of each carrier. I'm not at all discounting the fact that these are definite benefits of choosing UA instead of F9...they are...but there's nothing that changes to the FF program can do about either one. (And we're still waiting and hoping for a FF alliance, but that's not a matter of Frontier's ER program rules, of course.)
Originally Posted by
BlueHorseShoe2000
4) Bonus miles based on elite level and fare class.
That one Frontier actually does...bonus 25% bonus just for beind Ascent, 50% for being Summit, 25% bonus miles for purchasing Classic, and 50% bonus for purchasing Classic Plus.
Originally Posted by
BlueHorseShoe2000
1) Priority on the stand-by list regardless of when you checked-in.
2) You're accomodated much, much better during irregular ops than regular passengers are.
3) The 1k desk will open up award inventory for you when seats aren't available to the general public or lower tier elites.
These three I find very interesting, and I wonder to what extent Frontier does or could do these things:
--Midwest Miles Executive had "priority standby" but I don't see that listed as perk in ER. I would think Frontier could add that policy fairly easily.
--Regarding the 1k desk working with award inventory, do you know what the mile cost is like, Blue? There are "last seat available" awards for elites only for 50k domestic and 60k international on Frontier, so I'm not sure if that's similar or not.
--Regarding the help durring irregular ops, I'm curious to know how they do this. Is there a structural means that makes this happen, like a separate line? Are agents instructed to rebook 1k first and have more leeway in what they can do? This one is interesting to me because I'm not sure how best to implement this, so knowing what your experience with UA is will help. At least in my mind a benefit like this should have some structure so it's not just the whim of the agent who is helping you.
A larger question I have is does it make sense to have an airline like Frontier match line-by-line high tier FF perks of the big airlines. Of course one school of thought is that the answer has to be yes as much as possible to be competitive. But maybe the different nature of their traffic base and route network mean mimicing the programs of the big airlines isn't especially effective.
Much of what the big airlines do with their top-elite and hyper-elite programs is based on the idea that (and these are made up numbers for illustration) the top 6% of the customer base brings in 20% of the revenue. It makes sense to offer exeptional perks to keep those people loyal, and it's critical to at least match the exceptional perks of the competitors who want to poach those customers.
At an airline like United, the highest tiers of elite status likely include relatively frequent international F and J flyers, the very busiest of road warriors, transcon commuters, and the like.
At an airline like Frontier, I doubt there's anywhere near the concentration of revenue production from top-tier flyers there is at someone like UA. So just because someone is among Frontier’s best flyers, should the really get the perks that United’s best do? And if some in Frontier’s 98th percentile doesn’t really bring in a ton more revenue than someone at Frontier’s 90th percentile, should there be a higher elite level for the best of the best? (I mean 98th and 90th percentile of all F9 customers, not just of FF members or elite FF members.)
FF elite levels are both about rewarding good customers (to attain loyalty) and about incenting potential customers to bring more business. If they have virtually nobody in the 80k, 100k, 120k annual miles, it doesn’t make sense to put a tier up there because nobody can really attain it. If instead they profile their target business traveler as someone who can give 20-50k to Frontier annually if they are loyal, putting their top FF tier in that range makes sense. And if that's where their best elite level is, maybe that's too large and too ordinary a group of travelers to get white-glove treatment?