Great idea, but I doubt they would want to give up all that ancillary revenue.

In fact, at today's conference call, they talked about "tinkering" with the STRETCH seat fees.

The DL/Amex "first bag free" arrangement is projected to bring in more rev than any income lost by not charging for the first checked bag.

Upgrade award ticket to Classic for minimal fee, i.e. $15-$20.

I hope that the merged program maintains Midwest Airline Amtrak award options, especially for the sleeper accommodations. These awards are better than Amtrak's.

Upgrade to Classic or Classic Plus for a minimal amount of miles. Three to Five thousand, perhaps.

Retain YX50 and YX45 awards, as in current form. I believe that these two options will be discontinued the end of this month.

Those were essentially useless. A phone call to the MM service center with plenty of lead time would result in them finding YX25 availability. Of course, they sometimes had to get approval from a supervisor.

I've used the award several times, including nabbing the last seat on a MKE-FLL trip early April, a few years ago; I needed to get down to Fla unexpectedly, and the YX50 was the best option, especially compared to how the fare was pricing.

I think it may resurface, in a slightly different form.

We'll have to see what we are left with once the two programs are integrated.

I hope we continue to deal with the many friendly CSRs that staffed the MM service center, they were always willing to go that extra mile to find something that met your reward needs. The web may have shown no availability, but a phone call would find something for you.

THAT is amazing.

I never dreamed of making a phone call, thinking that everyone was accessing the same system.

The MM service center could make it happen. I can recall three separate occasions when they accommodated me even though the website showed no availability.

I have heard from a couple of sources that there will be no change in the FF employees, and that management of the program will be from Milwaukee.

The MM folks always try to be accommodating and are a real asset to the company. It is that kind of service that helps build customer loyalty.

I look forward to working with them some day.

Are Frontier's award tiers fairly similar to the YX45 and YX50?

25,000 Standard domesitc award
45,000 Choice domesitc award
50,000 Last Seat Available award (Ascent & Summit members only)

I'm not a F9 member yet (figured it would be more hassle to combined accounts rather than move YX directly over) but at least for the higher-level FF members there is still last-seat-available award for 50k.

Until not long ago (last year?), Midwest's last-seat-available award was only open to Executive level flyers. If that's how Frontier does it, it goes back to how it used to be on Midwest, although it's easier now to get elite status than it used to be, too (20 segements versus 25 to get Executive in the past).

Does anybody know specifically the difference between Standard and Choice?

I am bringing back some ideas for consideration, since we have not heard anything recently on any new airline/alliance partnerships, nor on moving all of the existing MM partners over to the EarlyReturns program.