You raised a lot of interesting questions, knope. Let me try to tackle a few of them.

The priority stand-by list IMO is a huge benefit and has helped me out many times over the years. It's great when you want to catch an earlier flight and can move directly to the top of the list, regardless if I was the last person to be added. Obviously this benefit can get diluted a bit at elite heavy airports like ORD or SFO, but it's still a nice perk. I remember one instance a few years a go when I was flying back to MKE through ORD. The flight I was booked on to MKE was delayed several hours. There was an earlier flight available that already had a stanby list of 30 + people. As a 1k, I moved immediately to the top of the list and secured one of the two remaining seats left. Yeah, I got a few dirty looks from some unhappy stanby passengers but I made it home a lot sooner than I would have otherwise.

For award travel, I've only had to use the 1k desk a couple of times to get on the flights I wanted. These were all "saver" awards and did not require any significant mileage premiums. A few years back they got inventory management to release two business class tickets to Australia for me and my wife. This was 10 months in advance of our trip when no saver awards for first or business class were available. It was great to be able to confirm seats in a premium cabin for our vacation that far in advance instead of having to monitor award availability daily. I should point out that this benefit is only available to 1k and Global Service members.

Regarding irregular operations, there are a lot of things that are done. For example, I'm often immediately re-booked on the next available flight, often in first class (domestic flights only). Depending on how high the loads are, it can take several days to re-accomodate some passengers. There is a special phone number that 1ks can call to re-book travel so there is no need to wait in long lines to be re-accomodated. Other things that they do for 1ks include booking them at higher end hotels when the last flight of the day gets cancelled, are much more willing to book you on another carrier (United has put me on Midwest out of MKE when I specifically requested them instead of initial alternatives offered on U.S. Airways or Delta). It's stuff like this that helps keep me loyal to United and Star Alliance. This is one reason I never earned elite status on Midwest despite flying them on a somewhat regular basis.


There was also one recent experience that really reinforced why I will continue to remain loyal to United. Flying J class from ORD-FRA my first choice for dinner wasn't available. No big deal. However, the purser came to my seat and personally apologized. Later, I was given a $200 voucher due to this perceived "inconvenience." I couldn't believe that they were offering that type of compensation for something as trivial as not getting your first meal choice. It was a very nice touch. Obviously, a situation like this doesn't really apply to Frontier but it's things like this that make me feel United does in fact value and appreciate my business.

With all of that said, I realize that my business travel (frequent international business class flights and lots of higher fare domestic flights) may be outside of the norm from many here. As a result, the benefits of top tier elite status on an airline like United are far more important than anything Frontier could or should ever offer.

Circumstances will obviously be different for everybody. However, I thought it was important to point out to another 1k what he or she might be losing by moving most, if not all, of their business to Frontier.

Frontier is a good airline and serves the frequent traveler out of Denver or Milwaukee well. From a revenue standpoint, United and Frontier have very different route networks and chase after very different types of customers. There's nothing wrong at all with this approach. Because of this, both airlines will have to cater to different segments of the flying public in order to geneate revenue and loyalty.

This is probably way more than anyone wanted to know about 1k benefits (especially since this is the Frontier forum) but thought it was necessary to point out some of the differences on how elites are handled.