Is there any way to see the seatmap for a Frontier flight on their (or other) web-site? I am thinking about standing by for a later flight and would like to know how tight it is going to be and if I should spend the $25 confirmed fee.

I tried a dummy booking and there was a choice for seat selection based on seatmap, but I got to the credit card entry point and did not get the seat selection.

My company's travel agent site will give me the map, but I am blocked from accessing flights less than six hours out. Standby is at four hours, so another way to access the map would be ideal.

I've never been able to see the seat map until I've paid for (thereby booking) the ticket. The seat selector doesn't come until you've booked the ticket. If you want to see how many available seats there are, however, then you can use a website like www.seatcounter.com to see how many available seats are available on a given flight. It doesn't show you a seat map, but it does tell you how many available seats are on the flight.

Also, F9's call center is a painless choice as well. Give them a call and see what's left for the flight you want.

Lastly, (if it is an option for you) why not change your ticket? If you have status with F9 it won't cost you anything to rebook the ticket to later that day. The call center has done this for me plenty of times before the 4 hour window starts because of having status (and 100k on F9 this year).

Three more round-trips and I will get Ascent via segments. Having free changes and the three-day standby window for Summit would be very handy for me, but I can't see me getting that level this year unless my work schedule changes drastically.

Expertflier.com shows seat maps for Frontier, though they seem to become unavailable day-of-departure (not that it matters since you can check-in online and see them there). The service is not free but it does have a free trial, I've found it very useful (especially to see award availability when I don't have enough miles to book yet, the Frontier system refuses to show you them).

You can see seatmaps on Orbitz until roughly six hours before scheduled departure. *Public seat maps like this are not perfect* so you can't 100% rely on them. But they are useful for general information if you understand a few things about them:

(a) Public seatmaps are not useful for airlines that do not automatically assign seats. Most airlines do, but keep that in mind.

(b) Every airline shows certain seats blocked out, and just which seats varies by airline and by plane. These can be good seats (like bulkhead) or bad seats (like no-recline rows).

(c) Exit rows are a particular question mark. Some airlines and seat map sources always show them as full becuase you can't book them. Others show them accurately.

(d) To get an idea of what seats are blocked, check the seatmap for the same plane on the same airline months out on an off-peak day. Right about now, a Wednesday in the middle of January should be pretty light. If (for example) the plane is virtually empty but the back two rows are show unavailable, they are probably empty and blocked out on all seatmaps. Check a few flights and look for a pattern if it is not obvious.

(e) When seat maps appear close to full, the amount of "play" is greatest.
Say you have a plane with 100 seats. Looking at seatmaps on light days, you figure out that they always show the 6 exit row seats as blocked, and the back 6 seats as always blocked as well.

In one instance, you see 60/100 seats as blocked. Most likely the plane is booked to around 48. The back row of seats is likely open because with plenty of of seats available, nobody is likely actually seated there. The six exit row seats appear as occupied but may well be open. Some or all of them *could* be pre-reserved, so you can't completely rely on the flight being booked to 48, but it should be pretty close.

On a different flight, this same aircraft/airline shows fully occupied except for 2 open spots. Is it booked to 98? Could be. But if all 6 exit row seats are unoccupied and none of the 6 bad seats in the back are booked, it could be booked only to 86. On the flip side, this could also be the seatmap of a flight booked to 110 (10 over), some of whom did not get seat assignments at booking because no general-inventory seats were available then. The two empty seats you see on the seatmap now are two people who recently cancelled their trips.

So public seatmaps can give you a pretty good idea of how full a plane is if you're careful in understanding and using them, but there is definitely some swag, especially when a plane approaches full. What I usually suggest to doubters is the next time you actually book a ticket for real and see the actual live seatmap, check out the same flight seatmap from Orbitz. With the exception of certain blocked seats, it usually matches cleanly.

Good points. Here is what I found for Frontier via my company's TA site:

Blocked: All of row 1, 2C/D, 3C/D, 22D/E/F (or 19D/E/F on 318). That back row is for wheelchair storage.

"Premium": Rest of rows 2 & 3, all of row 4, all of the exit row (10 on 319 or 9 on 318), and C/D on the rows from 5 up to the exit row.

It appears the blocks and premium flags are released at 48 hours to flight.


The surprising piece of data is that the exit rows tend to be slow filling. I guess the seating software will not automatically place Ascent or Summit members there. I will have to remember to check what I get assigned when I get status.

I have noticed on light flights that the plane is very front-loaded with passengers. I'll gladly take the rear when I can get a whole block of rows to myself. It is a good sign when you know the plane is a 319 and the gate agent starts boarding with row 15 and up (with a packed plane they usually start with row 19).

Sshhhhhhhhh!!!

Besides the great attitudes of all employees, the fantastic telephone agents, the Summit benefits (free booze, free confirmed standby, and unlimited free changes on all ticket classes at only 25,000 miles), and the Direct TV (delay? eh... more Discovery Channel)... the ability to book a flight the day before and still end up in 10D or 10C is one of my favorite things about F9!