This is more welcome news regarding advance seating, but the cut in mileage earning capability through a third-party site is going to affect Ascent and Summit elites, isn't it?
How will I be able to keep my status for the next year when I only earn 50% of the miles because of the ticket booking change? Unless they lower the elite level mileage qualification by 50%, which I didn't read anything about. I'm not going to be flying 50K miles in 2013 with any one airline, including Frontier, so bye-bye F9 Summit status. I probably won't fly 30K either, so any of my status options end after next year.
I think what this really means is that they are phasing out the elite program by making it impossible to qualify for it unless you buy your tickets through them. It looks like the loyal business traveler really has no role in their future plans. It's so frustrating to go out of your way to support an airline, get rewarded for doing it (I do love the priority boarding/check-in, stretch upgrade and free bags), then have them make a change like this that torpedoes the future... which now looks more like Southwest for me. And won't that eventually lead to another bitter end for Frontier?
Originally Posted by
knope2001
We're required to use the corporate booking tool, and this message was loaded recently about the Frontier seating change:
No indication of frequent flyer earnings changes here, although I'm not surprised since the corporate travel service isn't concerned about our loyalty points.
As for Southwest (since someone else asked about it in relation to a corporate booking tool) we've had it available right along with other flights for a number of years. However it appears to be a separate system interfaced in, because in some ways it displays Southwest like all other airlines, but in other ways you have to "click through" to get comparable information. There are certain different rules for how to handle changes, cancelations, and refunds compared to other airlines as well. But it's better than a handful of years back when booking Southwest could not be handled with the online tool.