Frontier Award Availability
 

Frontier experts,

I have a friend of the family who is trying to use her Frontier miles to fly coach from Denver to NYC. Frontier apparently told her they have no award flight availability from Denver to NYC for 10 months. None whatsoever.

I have never flown Frontier and have zero experience with them. I find it hard to believe that ANY airline doesn't have a single award flight available at any time, for 10 months!

Is Frontier particularly stingy with their award seats?

Thanks,

Truly
visiting from the United/Conti/Hilton/Starwood boards

I don't have any experience redeeming FF miles on F9.

However that particular route is just very, very full every day, so I don't think they would block out many FF seats.

The way things are at F9 these days, profitable flights are being maximized, so I'd guess that LGA, DCA, and LAS are pretty tight in the FF redemtion area for the next few months.

Checko

Never redeemed any miles so I can't say what the norm is for that route which I fly a lot and is always packed.

Try Denver to Hartford which is less busy. Its a 90 minute drive to NYC. Alternatively, if focused on public transportation, you can catch a shuttle to the train station and then Amtrak to NYC. Not the most efficient route but an option.

I believe F9 also runs DEN - PHL but haven't flown that route.

While Early Returns continues to grow with F9, there seems to be very little experience with redeeming miles. Can anyone share their experiences with award availability? I'm sure many of us would like to know if we are accumulating miles in a mini-NonePass type of program---or not.

I have redeemed over the past 2-3 years:
4 tickets to La Guardia
2 Tickets To Cabo San Lucas
5 Tickets to San Diego
1 Ticket to Orange County

I think that is all. I have not had any problems other than maybe adjusting departure or arrival by a day. My parents have a ton of miles and come visit us often on reward tickets.

I haven't redeemed a standard EarlyReturns award in quite a while, as they've never been available when I wanted to fly (I am at the point when I want to travel during the peak/popular times and am not willing to sacrifice my convenience to save some miles), however I think that the EarlyReturns Plus awards are fantastic. 30,000 Miles for _any_ available seat, any time. Compare that to United, where the difficult-to-get "saver" seats are 25,000 miles, and "Standard" awards are 50,000. Plus, United charges $50-$75 for last-minute awards, and $100 to change city pairs or to cancel and redeposit. Frontier has no fees for the former, and $35 to cancel/redeposit.

On several occasions I have booked seats the day before major holidays which were selling for $700-$800. Plus these tickets are completely changable, at no additional cost, as often as you want before travel. The only requirement for this is that you have at least Ascent status, but 15,000 miles is pretty easy to fly each year.

It's getting tougher and tougher to redeem "standard" awards on any carrier, but I think that Frontier's extra-mileage awards are the best of any carrier.

There is a lot of FF availability from DEN-LGA. I looked up 3 sets of random dates in April and May and most days had at least one flight available and sometimes two. Those days not having availabilty did have seats during the same week. (the award calendar will show availability on surrounding dates if your initial date request has none).

My personal experience redeeming awards has been very favorable, although it's not quite as easy as it used to be. Early Returns is NOT nonepass.

I got 3 awards from Denver to Puerto Vallarta in March. I had to change my preferred days by 1 day but it worked like a charm. I think F9 is not bad and being able to get any date for twice the miles is a nice bonus.