Frontier website proposed modifications
 

With the final days of the Midwest website scheduled for the end of October 2010, what changes would you like to see to the Frontier website, including features and options now available on the YX site, but not on F9's?

Addendum to post
I opened this thread, because it's been quiet around here, since the move.

For starters, I suggest retaining the drop-down list on YX's homepage, which allows a customer to see all of the destinations in the route system.

Unfortunately, I don't know much about the YX site since I never flew them. But, if you ever want some ideas that work well on other airline sites to improve the Frontier site, let us know.

I would like the logged in look and feel and the booking look and feel to match up more with the homepage and the rest of the site. There are a few random UI things that just don't fit (like that random progress bar when you login) that I'd like to see improved. More of a fit and finish type of upgrade. It would make sense with the new and improved Frontier to update the entire site's look. It wouldn't have to be a big change by any means but a bolder, cleaner layout would be welcome.

Also I'm not sure what kind of infrastructure on the backend but the site loads too slow. The homepage should not take longer than a second to load, ever. Cluster and load balance!

Finally, bring over the mobile site from Midwest and update the colors.

1. Allow a seat change

2. Allow a date change

3. Save the traveler information (birthday and gender). For some reason I have to reenter this at every booking and can't find a way to add it to my profile.

+1
The YX mobile site works well; it's a great option when the main site is down or runs slowly.

According to a Frontier tweet, regarding availability of a mobile site,

I have not been using the Frontier site yet primarily because my travel and FF membership is still in the YX world. I can't log into the F9 site (yet) to access and change my reservations (like seat selection). That will change soon. But I have messed around on the Frontier site to get used to it and have found a few things I wish were different.

(a) Having to select the travel date from a calendar -- versus allowing it to be typed in or selected from a calendar -- is clumsy.

(b) When you get the results of a booking search, there doesn't seem to be a way to go back (either using the back button of the browser or using a "modify search" type of button) which retains any information. You have to enter everything from scratch again.

For example, shopping Appleton-Florida in March. Price ATW-TPA, but then you want to also price MKE-TPA or maybe ATW-MCO to see if other options are cheaper. You can't "get back" to modify your search. You have to start from scratch. And that includes plodding through several months of calendar to re-select your dates with each new search.

(c) There is not a way to search adjacent airports like EWR/LGA or LAX/LGB/SNA at once.

(d) The airport maps on the Frontier site are a waste of space because they show a sillhouette of the roads and buildings but not where Frontier is. So for example they show Kansas City's three terminal rings, the roadways and main parking structures, but they don't even tell which terminal ring Frontier is in. The most important thing an airport map can show is where to find Frontier...and that's especially true at multi-terminal airports like LAX. What were they thinking putting those worthless maps out there?

(e) The desktop timetable should have the ability to display schedule by a specific date [I]or/I] by a week at a time. That's especially necessary because Frontier has a fair number of non-daily flights, and you want to push people toward those nonstops. The Frontier desktop timetable is the same application which Midwest used for years, and the YX program had the search-by-week option. I would really like that restored in the Frontier desktop ap.

(f) Being able to purchase an upgrade to Stretch ahead of time would be a boon in my opinion. Not sure if that is a technical issue the F9 site can't do at this point, or if they specifically choose not to offer this as a matter of policy.

(g) When you search using "more search options", it does not retain what you've already typed into the home page search boxes. And when you get to the "more search options" there is a dropdown "search by" box. The two options are "Price" and "Flexible Dates". To the best of my knowledge, both choices get you exactly the same results. ????


There are things I do like about the Frontier site, and some of the frustrating things from the Midwest site don't appear to be an issue on Frontier's. But it would be nice to see some of these improvements made. A guy can hope!

+1

What the finished product looks like is anyone's guess. Be careful what you wish for.

+100

I've never understood why F9 won't allow you to change your seats online..

When searching for reward flights, I'd like to see a calendar of what's available instead of simply saying that the selected date is not available. That really irks me.

+1
Very good idea, United has that and works pretty well. With the low availability on Frontier searching online is a pain and I just tend to call their call center.

Amen!

Almost every airline has this functionality - I usually call as well, which is a pain and it's expensive for the airline

Frontier's integration between their front-end site (apparently custom built) and their back-end (powered by Saabre) is buggy. For example, when I go to the main frontierairlines.com site, it showed me logged-in with links to view my reservations (as opposed to showing the login dialog in the upper right). Clicking on the My Reservations link, however, opens up the embedded Saabre frame and gives a "Session expired" message. They should really standardize this so that you're not prompted to re-login on one part of the site, where you are still logged in on another.

As we are about to say farewell to www.midwestairlines.com, I am anxious to see if there are any upcoming changes in the works for the Frontier website.

Right now, much of the info on the Frontier site is still geared toward the "old" Frontier, including company info/history: http://www.frontierairlines.com/fron...our-history.do.

I hope that the best features and info from the Midwest site will be moved over to the Frontier site.

It would be nice to have details on the fleet, including aircraft seatmaps, as Midwest displayed. Currently, there are only links to Airbus and
Airliners.net for fleet info.

It would be nice if Midwest Miles members could actually login!
 

It would be nice if login actually worked.

I've tried 3 times to login today and each time have gotten the error message "The ability to sign in is currently unavailable. Please try again later".

Pretty sorry cutover. While the midwest site was nothing special, I was always able to login.