Frontier is getting trickier with their fare sales
Jan 8, 2019, 1:47 pm
#1
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Original Poster
Join Date: Mar 2000
Posts: 17,423
Frontier is getting trickier with their fare sales
One of the nice thing about Frontier's sales has been that they've actually offered a fair number of seats at the ultra low price (hoping to gouge their customers will lots of additional fees later, but those are optional). Sure, sometimes the fare is only good mid-week and such, but there are seats available.
But I got an email today from Frontier offering $25 fares through early March. Sounds good, right? Well, for a lot of routes, I saw only ONE DAY during this entire sale period where seats were available at that price.
I can't say I'm really surprised. Their whole business model is based on charging people more than they expect to pay (with ancillary revenue), so why would they be "honest" with their fare sales? As long as they offer the sale price for one-day, I think it's legal. Right?
But I got an email today from Frontier offering $25 fares through early March. Sounds good, right? Well, for a lot of routes, I saw only ONE DAY during this entire sale period where seats were available at that price.
I can't say I'm really surprised. Their whole business model is based on charging people more than they expect to pay (with ancillary revenue), so why would they be "honest" with their fare sales? As long as they offer the sale price for one-day, I think it's legal. Right?
Jan 9, 2019, 9:12 pm
#2
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Nov 2000
Location: Atlanta, GA, USA
Programs: Frontier Gold, DL estranged 1MMer, Spirit VIP, CO/NW/UA/AA once gold/plat/comped gold now dust.
Posts: 38,151
Spirit ROUTINELY does these deep-looking discounts like the 90% one they had a few days ago, but oh, wait...it's good only Tuesday and Wednesday. And here's a long list of south-of-the-border destinations where it's not good at all and specific routes, like ATL-LAS or ATL-LAX, that are excluded. I presume it must be legal but they've got such a tight box on most of their sales that I've started to tune out. I still have their credit card from years ago and unredeemed miles with that (and they convert dollar spend to miles at 2 miles per dollar), but I realized about a week ago that I didn't fly them at all in 2018.
I've found Frontier to be less unreasonable, though YMMV. In my experience Frontier has far more sales with dates other than Tue./Wed., though generally Mon-Thur. and Sat. is as wide as they usually go (Fri. and especially Sun. are tough to crack). There's always a chance they could sell out or allocate low for other dates, and of course they've got all those 3/week and even 2/week thin schedules on some routes (if Fri and Sun. are the only days they fly you're really hosed).
* * *
Will be flying my first trip as a 50K this weekend, BTW. They botched my DD sign-up (should have been 50% discounted but they charged me the full $49.99) but they were able to issue a credit via e-mail help. Reserving the stretch seat at the time of booking worked fine, so it'll be nice not to have to log in right at the 24-hour window (which is especially a pain when at the destination and having other things to do). It feels kinda brazen to be able to go to LAS on a weekend (out Saturday during the day, back Mon.-Tue. red-eye) at $85 RT a-i, but there are a handful of weekends annually where you can do it and also not get clobbered on the hotel for checking in on a Saturday. Three days with the midsize hybrid with Hertz came to $51.19 after coupons and will hopefully earn 1.2K WN miles.
I've found Frontier to be less unreasonable, though YMMV. In my experience Frontier has far more sales with dates other than Tue./Wed., though generally Mon-Thur. and Sat. is as wide as they usually go (Fri. and especially Sun. are tough to crack). There's always a chance they could sell out or allocate low for other dates, and of course they've got all those 3/week and even 2/week thin schedules on some routes (if Fri and Sun. are the only days they fly you're really hosed).
* * *
Will be flying my first trip as a 50K this weekend, BTW. They botched my DD sign-up (should have been 50% discounted but they charged me the full $49.99) but they were able to issue a credit via e-mail help. Reserving the stretch seat at the time of booking worked fine, so it'll be nice not to have to log in right at the 24-hour window (which is especially a pain when at the destination and having other things to do). It feels kinda brazen to be able to go to LAS on a weekend (out Saturday during the day, back Mon.-Tue. red-eye) at $85 RT a-i, but there are a handful of weekends annually where you can do it and also not get clobbered on the hotel for checking in on a Saturday. Three days with the midsize hybrid with Hertz came to $51.19 after coupons and will hopefully earn 1.2K WN miles.
