increased award availability
 

After communicating with two F9 VPs this month, F9 is clearly aware of their lack of award seat availability. After their admission to being aggressive with allotment, I got the feeling things will change eventually.
My communication was prompted after several failed attempts to redeem awards to Mexico as far as 9 mos in the future and with generous flexibility.

Having two VPs respond says something about F9s commitment to their customers. My inquiry would have gone unanswered at a legacy carrier.

...still the one...

personally, I'd wait for evidence that the seat allotment has increased before i'd praise the VPs about their commitment to customers.

So a VP returning one of your emails would be worthless to you?

it's an email
it could be from anyone

I agree. EarlyReturns has had extremely poor award availability for some time. While it is good that they acknowledge it, I'll wait until they change it before considering more flights on F9.

New parent YX has had fairly good award availability in the past, maybe that is something they will align.

I agree, with everyone...!
 

:rolleyes:

I'm not normally this compromising, but after reading the posts, yes! Yes, getting emails or having conversations with high level execs in any organization is highly valuable. Any F9 VP that wants my opinion knows how to reach me :D

Yes, talk is just that until it materializes into action. F9's award availability generally can be summarized as wide open to Tulsa midweek in February. All else is blocked out - with the most maddening website feature of not suggesting nearby availability.

Desperately want F9 to succeed, but it's tough to move miles to them until there's a chance of return on your efforts. Unless of course, you love Tulsa in winter.

Actually Frontier's new parent is Republic Air Holdings - they bought both F9 and YX. Republic's various divisions have only provided RJ feed to legacy carriers (UA, DL, and US) in the past and not had any flights under their own name so it's unclear what award benefits they may offer at F9.

YX is effectively disappearing, although the name will still be used. All the flying will be done by F9 and Republic Airlines, the division of Republic that currently operates E170/175's and will be operating the E190's.

All well covered in the Midwest forum. Also well covered is the endless circular argument about "Is YX now Republic, or is Republic now YX?"

As to award availability topic of the thread, as you point out, Republic has never had a FF program, so the only comparison that can be made in the Republic/F9/YX "family" is to Midwest Miles. That program, at least in the past, has had reasonable award availability, which EarlyReturns currently lacks. As one who would like to redeem my EarlyReturns miles, I am hopeful that award availability will become more like the YX brand MidwestMiles (owned, operated, and dictated by Republic), since F9 is now owned by Republic.

For the sake of both F9 and YX elites I hope your hopes are realized.

Jim

To clarify, I spoke directly to one VP via phone and communicated via email with another. I did not get a generic form letter reply from some general email address.
I emailed my concern, got an immediate email, then a followup phone call. My situation was resolved and I believe F9 will fix future availability issues. I'm not saying there will be 20+ more award seats on each flight, I'm just saying I genuinely believe an effort to accommodate more frequent travelers will be made.

I've been trying to get a seat out of LGA for years(!), it is never available. Earlyretuns is a total waste of effort for anyone based in NYC.

^ Same for people in DEN ... unless you want to go to some place in the middle of nowhere (fargo?).

I've managed to grab a flight or two back home to St. Useless, but I usually wind up having to take the 6AM as it's the only one available. Once I got a flight out of MCO with miles. I had flown to MCO for a quick getaway in Daytona and planned to leave for a project that Monday. Project got canceled, so I had to book myself back home. It seems that availability opens up the day before, but that's not very helpful when you are trying to plan a trip weeks or months in advance.