I became Elite at the end of last year, and I have been pleasantly surprised with the perks for a "low budget" flyer such as myself. Although I have trained myself to take a personal item and do the "Scottevest coat trick", it is nice to now be able to take a normal size carryon should I really need it. Being able to pick a seat is really the bee's knees for me, especially since the redesigned Frontier site "forgot" my aisle seat preference for a while. So while I always comparison shop Frontier and Spirit, if the price is within a few dollars, Frontier is the winner.

The only real advantage with the Spirit credit card is boarding early; big deal. The Frontier card really is pretty good for people who wouldn't normally give a hoot about frequent flyer programs. While the Spirit card grants you low mile award flights if you book far in advance, it is almost impossible to find any roundtrips that aren't Tuesday-Wednesday, or some such canard.

Honestly, it is so easy to get Elite with them that if you fly with any degree of regularity for recreation --not business, really-- it's worth it. I booked two weekends back to back in January CLE-LAS or $28 each roundtrip. That's almost 8000 miles right there. And that is before ever using the credit card or booking additional trips the other 11 months of the year.