I'm currently a "short stroke-high RPM" flyer primarily between Colorado and SoCal and pretty much on UA these days. Lots of segments, not so many miles.

I'd be interested to read others' opinions on F9 and what to expect if I were to switch. Of interest are things like customer service, IRROPS, how delays/cancellations are handled and how often they occur, frequency and quality (whatever that is) of promotions, discounts, sales, award tickets and other perks, and so forth.

Asking for opinions on FT always gives me pause - we seem to have a healthy share of them - but bring 'em on!

Thanks,
-btr

I'd honestly say you can't go wrong with Frontier. I'm a Summit level and I don't even live in Colorado. My experience has been very few delays, new aircraft, TV and Stretch seats available for free, or a nominal charge (flat fee, not distance based like UA), really low fares. Plus, if you purchase tickets on the Frontier website you have the option of Classic Plus fares which give you 150% of actual miles flown, or Classic fare which gives you 125%. Downside is that many of the ground employees don't seem to know what they're doing, but they never appear to be rude to passengers, and they usually give the passsenger the benefit of the doubt if they can't figure it out.

BTR,

I see that you are a UA-1K. I'm a former one myself and have been flying Frontier for several years now as their top-tier, Summit. I must admit, it's terribly tough to give up that level of status for any other airline. But, here's why I fly Frontier.

1. Friendliness of cabin crew
2. Ease of attaining top tier FF status
3. Free Live television
4. Free premium drinks or bottle of water
5. Very good on-time performance record
6. Newer planes
7. A Concourse at DIA
8. Good prices that are almost always cheaper than UA

Here's what I miss about UA.

1. Perks of 1K FF status
2. First class seat
3. Solid international route network
4. Great FF aliance
5. Route frequency

In the end, it's the little things that won me over to Frontier. They are professional, caring, and courteous to their customers. They listen to customer feedback and actually acknowledge it. And, as the Milwaukee flyers can tell you, they serve a pretty good cookie on each flight after 10a.

Since you brought it up, I wanted to take a brief moment to address IRROPS. Since you're a big flyer to Colorado, you know the likelihood of this occurring. I have found that Frontier handles it about as well as anyone else. However, if we get one of those storms that pounds for a couple of days, Frontier is not as prepared IMO, because they don't have as much personnel. So, keep that in mind before you switch, because with your 1K status, you get immediate attention at UA. At Frontier, you could wait for hours on end in the rare instance of a major disruption.

Thanks for the info.

Coincidentally, there's a big storm in the UA forum now about some new "enhancements" to their FF program that were announced after I started this thread.

Stumblefoot - given the domestic nature of my trips I think my "miss list" would probably be down to about 2 - 1st class seats and route frequency.

Any opinions on the stretch seating? Is it just seat pitch, or are the seats a bit wider too?

F9 is looking pretty good right now.

Frequency to SoCal isn't too bad in comparison, and it depends on where you're going. Monday 12/13 schedule:

LAX
F9 6
UA 9

SNA
F9 4
UA 5

SAN
F9 5
UA 5

Frontier has Long Beach but not BUR nor ONT.
United has Burbank and Ontario but not LGB.

The Frontier departure time choices on LAX don't seem to have any critical shortcomings compared to United -- both have a wide range from early AM to late PM both directions, though of course UA has a few more choices during the day. Of course it all depends on your schedule needs...some people couldn't live without a 6:00am flight and other people wouldn't touch a 6:00am flight.


The seats are conventional width, but at least in my opinion the added personal space from the legroom makes width less of an issue.

I'm a legacy Midwest flyer who spend many years in the wide 2x2 seats on the DC9/M80/717, and at 6'3" 220# I'm not tiny. Stretch is definitely not as roomy as the domestic F/J seating on narrowbody planes like I experienced on YX, but I'm fairly happy with it. The perceived width isn't bad, in part because the Airbus and Ejet family is a wider cabin the some competing airframes. And the significant extra leg room adds useful personal space, which makes the whole thing feel more comfortable. What I definitely do miss greatly is the width of the armrest, not only because both people could use it, but because it put the passenger next to you just a little further away.

Stretch is not as good as F by any means, but it's a notably better experience than the regular seating IMHO.

Stretch seating is essentially the same as Economy Plus on United. The extra legroom is a definite plus. Other than that, it's a conventional seat with Economy service.

As a 1k myself, it would be very difficult for me to lose that level of elite status. Besides the points you mentioned (up-grades, etc.) there are also a bunch of other benefits to consider. Some that come to mind include:

1) Priority on the stand-by list regardless of when you checked-in.
2) You're accomodated much, much better during irregular ops than regular passengers are.
3) The 1k desk will open up award inventory for you when seats aren't available to the general public or lower tier elites.
4) Bonus miles based on elite level and fare class.
4) United has hubs at LAX and SFO and thus a much larger West Coast network than Frontier. This can help in cases where non-stop flights to DEN are sold-out/cancelled or if you need to make multiple stops.
5) United is part of the Star Alliance and as a result had a very robust global route network. While most of your travel is domestic, this can help a great deal when flying overseas for vacation, securing up-grades, etc. Frontier has nothing.
6) Frontier will not provide a status match to their top elite level (unlike other airlines).

While Frontier is a good airline, they do have some pretty significant limitations as well.

It is just seat pitch. The seats are not wider. In regular economy, I can't work on a laptop if the passenger in front of me reclines their seat. However, in Stretch, it isn't a problem.

BlueHorseShoe2000 makes several compelling arguments on keeping your 1K status too. I would say that 1, 2, and 4 apply equally as well at Frontier too. IMO, the lack of a global alliance FF partnership is Frontier's greatest gap at this point.

I don't see any mention of this so far, but one of Frontier's greatest perks to Summit members is that they waive all change fees. So you're free to make bookings far in advance for trips which "might" happen, change plans last minute, or even cancel trips entirely, and just use the credit for a future trip. The only downside is that you have to use the credit for a trip of the same or greater price, because you don't get a refund or remaining balance credit. I got around this by booking two one-way tickets (the same price as round-trip) for trips which I wasn't sure about, but wanted to lock-in the price at the 21-day point for maximum savings.

Edited to note: I am certainly not advocating abusing this by making purely speculative bookings, I only booked when I was reasonably certain that I was going, but it gave me the confidence that if my plans changed, I was in the clear. Along with the free confirmed same-day-change policy, being Summit allowed me to hop on earlier flights, decide to visit a different city last-minute, and generally live more in-the-moment than is possible for most flyers these days. I lost that status when I took a non-traveling job, but I'm hoping to keep Ascent this year.

With United's 1K threshold moving from 100 EQS to 120 EQS, 1K has become all but unreachable to me after this year, so I can't realistically count on those benefits.

With everything I've read here, and with my travel schedule getting me to Summit by March or April, I'm going to make the switch to F9 and see how it goes.

Again, thanks to everyone for all the input. It is greatly appreciated.

-btr

Thanks for posting that additional list of items, Blue. It's interesting to see some of the high-tier benefits of a huge international airline. I'm going to go through the list not to downplay or discredit them (they are all valid) but instead to look at the F9 program and wonder the extent to which some of them or are likely or reasonable for someone like Frontier to offer


Those two are not matters of policy but more about the nuts-and-bolts of each carrier. I'm not at all discounting the fact that these are definite benefits of choosing UA instead of F9...they are...but there's nothing that changes to the FF program can do about either one. (And we're still waiting and hoping for a FF alliance, but that's not a matter of Frontier's ER program rules, of course.)


That one Frontier actually does...bonus 25% bonus just for beind Ascent, 50% for being Summit, 25% bonus miles for purchasing Classic, and 50% bonus for purchasing Classic Plus.


These three I find very interesting, and I wonder to what extent Frontier does or could do these things:

--Midwest Miles Executive had "priority standby" but I don't see that listed as perk in ER. I would think Frontier could add that policy fairly easily.

--Regarding the 1k desk working with award inventory, do you know what the mile cost is like, Blue? There are "last seat available" awards for elites only for 50k domestic and 60k international on Frontier, so I'm not sure if that's similar or not.

--Regarding the help durring irregular ops, I'm curious to know how they do this. Is there a structural means that makes this happen, like a separate line? Are agents instructed to rebook 1k first and have more leeway in what they can do? This one is interesting to me because I'm not sure how best to implement this, so knowing what your experience with UA is will help. At least in my mind a benefit like this should have some structure so it's not just the whim of the agent who is helping you.


A larger question I have is does it make sense to have an airline like Frontier match line-by-line high tier FF perks of the big airlines. Of course one school of thought is that the answer has to be yes as much as possible to be competitive. But maybe the different nature of their traffic base and route network mean mimicing the programs of the big airlines isn't especially effective.

Much of what the big airlines do with their top-elite and hyper-elite programs is based on the idea that (and these are made up numbers for illustration) the top 6% of the customer base brings in 20% of the revenue. It makes sense to offer exeptional perks to keep those people loyal, and it's critical to at least match the exceptional perks of the competitors who want to poach those customers.

At an airline like United, the highest tiers of elite status likely include relatively frequent international F and J flyers, the very busiest of road warriors, transcon commuters, and the like.

At an airline like Frontier, I doubt there's anywhere near the concentration of revenue production from top-tier flyers there is at someone like UA. So just because someone is among Frontier’s best flyers, should the really get the perks that United’s best do? And if some in Frontier’s 98th percentile doesn’t really bring in a ton more revenue than someone at Frontier’s 90th percentile, should there be a higher elite level for the best of the best? (I mean 98th and 90th percentile of all F9 customers, not just of FF members or elite FF members.)

FF elite levels are both about rewarding good customers (to attain loyalty) and about incenting potential customers to bring more business. If they have virtually nobody in the 80k, 100k, 120k annual miles, it doesn’t make sense to put a tier up there because nobody can really attain it. If instead they profile their target business traveler as someone who can give 20-50k to Frontier annually if they are loyal, putting their top FF tier in that range makes sense. And if that's where their best elite level is, maybe that's too large and too ordinary a group of travelers to get white-glove treatment?

UA has two "prices" for award tickets - "Saver" and "Standard". Standard has much better seating availability, albiet at a greater cost of miles.
Also, the cost for award tickets differs for Y, C, and F (Economy, Business, First), and also for international and domestic. Availability for each of these groups is handled separately (I think - there's voodo at work there).

As if that wasn't enough, elites can get access to "extra" seats available in the various fare buckets, which is really the point of your question. I believe that there are folks on the UA board who work on figuring out the algorithms behind all this, however I personally haven't gone there.

Generally speaking, I've been able to get a ticket whenever I took a personal trip. Sometimes I had to go for the "standard" award ticket, sometimes not.
I think that the answer is "structural". Elites are sometimes automatically rebooked during IRROPS. I've found that much of the time that I get better rebooking when I call.

The various elite levels each have their own (800) number. Supposedly this gets them to the front of the line ahead of general members and such. What I've noticed is that I get native english speakers on the elite lines and someone in the India call center if I don't identify myself to the machine that answers. I'm not good at understanding foreign accents, so I consider this a perk.

UA also has the notion of "protection". If a flight might be cancelled or sufficiently delayed, 1Ks who know the drill can call and be put on a semi-confirmed seat on another flight "just in case". I have found this more useful when a B777 is at risk, and much less so for a CRJ.

I'm going to dodge part of your question here and focus on the selfish aspects of things - let's face it - we all do, and so do the airlines.

I'm more interested in a loyalty program (and hence the airline running it) that rewards me for my travel patterns. I spend a lot of time in airports. Probably more than I do in planes, and I want to be able to minimize that pain. UA was a reasonable fit for me until now since I will fall out of the 1K group, and half of my flights are on a very 1K-heavy route. In other words, I suspect that I would have *much* greater difficulty during IRROPS once I fall from grace (or 1K). It's not necessarily easy now.

I'm less concerned about international flights or airline partners. I know that they've got their advantages, but for me it's not an issue.

I will miss the wider seats in F, but I really won't miss the free meals or the free drinks there. I sleep or I'm hacking away on my laptop. Sometimes I'll eat the food, but it really doesn't compare to my smoked roasts

All this to say, I like what I see with F9, and I'll probably have about the same benes that I would have had at UA in a year, and by all accounts with staff that seems consistently concerned with making people happy.

I like happy people, especially when I'm one of 'em.

Finally, UA is worried about the bottom line. So is F9, but I can't help but think that F9 has firmly in mind that happy customers generate more business, whereas I think UA approaches it from a more revenue-centric perspective. I'll stop there. I neither want to generate flames or bring them to bear on myself.
-btr

Thanks for the info and you perspective. Btw, Welcome to the F9 board, btr. A bunch of us who migrated to this board with the YX/F9 combo are legacy YX'ers and more Milwaukee-centric, so it's nice to have more voice from the Denver side of the world.

Kind of you to be concerned, but we're generally pretty cordial (aka boring?) group here. I hope you find your time with Frontier...and here on the Frontier board...positive experiences.

You raised a lot of interesting questions, knope. Let me try to tackle a few of them.

The priority stand-by list IMO is a huge benefit and has helped me out many times over the years. It's great when you want to catch an earlier flight and can move directly to the top of the list, regardless if I was the last person to be added. Obviously this benefit can get diluted a bit at elite heavy airports like ORD or SFO, but it's still a nice perk. I remember one instance a few years a go when I was flying back to MKE through ORD. The flight I was booked on to MKE was delayed several hours. There was an earlier flight available that already had a stanby list of 30 + people. As a 1k, I moved immediately to the top of the list and secured one of the two remaining seats left. Yeah, I got a few dirty looks from some unhappy stanby passengers but I made it home a lot sooner than I would have otherwise.

For award travel, I've only had to use the 1k desk a couple of times to get on the flights I wanted. These were all "saver" awards and did not require any significant mileage premiums. A few years back they got inventory management to release two business class tickets to Australia for me and my wife. This was 10 months in advance of our trip when no saver awards for first or business class were available. It was great to be able to confirm seats in a premium cabin for our vacation that far in advance instead of having to monitor award availability daily. I should point out that this benefit is only available to 1k and Global Service members.

Regarding irregular operations, there are a lot of things that are done. For example, I'm often immediately re-booked on the next available flight, often in first class (domestic flights only). Depending on how high the loads are, it can take several days to re-accomodate some passengers. There is a special phone number that 1ks can call to re-book travel so there is no need to wait in long lines to be re-accomodated. Other things that they do for 1ks include booking them at higher end hotels when the last flight of the day gets cancelled, are much more willing to book you on another carrier (United has put me on Midwest out of MKE when I specifically requested them instead of initial alternatives offered on U.S. Airways or Delta). It's stuff like this that helps keep me loyal to United and Star Alliance. This is one reason I never earned elite status on Midwest despite flying them on a somewhat regular basis.


There was also one recent experience that really reinforced why I will continue to remain loyal to United. Flying J class from ORD-FRA my first choice for dinner wasn't available. No big deal. However, the purser came to my seat and personally apologized. Later, I was given a $200 voucher due to this perceived "inconvenience." I couldn't believe that they were offering that type of compensation for something as trivial as not getting your first meal choice. It was a very nice touch. Obviously, a situation like this doesn't really apply to Frontier but it's things like this that make me feel United does in fact value and appreciate my business.

With all of that said, I realize that my business travel (frequent international business class flights and lots of higher fare domestic flights) may be outside of the norm from many here. As a result, the benefits of top tier elite status on an airline like United are far more important than anything Frontier could or should ever offer.

Circumstances will obviously be different for everybody. However, I thought it was important to point out to another 1k what he or she might be losing by moving most, if not all, of their business to Frontier.

Frontier is a good airline and serves the frequent traveler out of Denver or Milwaukee well. From a revenue standpoint, United and Frontier have very different route networks and chase after very different types of customers. There's nothing wrong at all with this approach. Because of this, both airlines will have to cater to different segments of the flying public in order to geneate revenue and loyalty.

This is probably way more than anyone wanted to know about 1k benefits (especially since this is the Frontier forum) but thought it was necessary to point out some of the differences on how elites are handled.

Thanks for the information and personal accounts, Blue. Interesting stuff! And though we do sometimes take more latitutde on this board in talking about other airlines than some boards might, I think all this UA detail is meaningful in a discussion of Frontier's FF program. It shows what big competitors do and raises these questions: what can Frontier do to compete, and what should Frontier do to compete.

For the sake of discussion, Blue, let's put someone like you in Denver instead of Chicago (or Spain). When that person travels internationally, it's United all the way, of course, and they rack up status easily. When they travel domestically, it seems very highly likely that they are just as loyal to United because of the benefits 1k gets them...everything from white glove treatment to bonus miles. So that suggests that Frontier probably doesn't have much of a chance to win the business of this flyer no matter what they do...including trying to match the highest benefits of 1k FF loyalty. And for Frontier to match the status of a high-tier flyer...with no chance of winning their loyalty... essentially means that when a 1K UA flyer does end up on Frontier for whatever reason, they are treated like the best Frontier customer as a reward for flying United so much.


So maybe that gives reasoning why Frontier's FF elite benefit policies in some areas just don't match those of airlines like United. (I say policies because some benefits of being loyal to someone like UA are not based on policy but on the structure of the airline.) Then the next question becomes...do the benefits of Frontier's FF program align with the their best potential, strongest revenue producing traffic segments, and biggest competitors for the passengers Frontier can reasonably compete for. Hmmm...

You raise some interesting and valid points, but I would argue that not all 1ks are created equally.

Take someone like me. The primary reason I've had 1k status with United all of these years is due to long-haul international travel. With this type of flying you can quickly achieve 1k status, especially if you know how to work the system to your advantage. Once you hit the current thresholds for status (100k miles or 60 segments per year) any added flying doesn't really give you much besides more miles and a possible first class seat (United has one higher level of elite status-Global Services-which is by invitation only). This gives me flexibility to throw some business to another airline. In the past, this has normally been Midwest for me. Why? For starters, I really enjoyed flying Midwest. But there were more practical reasons as well. With the state of the airline industry, the on-going viability of many carriers has been in question. Therefore, it made sense to at least establish a base level of flying with another airline in case I had to make a sudden switch (Midwest had relationships with American, Northwest, and Delta so having to move to one of these carriers if United folded would not have been an issue).

As you mentioned, there are always going to be true blue United fliers that wouldn't even consider another airline for travel (unless they were in the Star Alliance). There are others, like me, that are open to trying out other airlines. Making the switch is far easier when the airline courts you.

With Frontier, I do think there are some opportunities for them to poach elite customers from the competition. While they don't have to offer all of the benefits and perks that an airline like United might but there are things they can do. Earlier this year, I asked Frontier for a status match. It took an eternity for them to get back to me. When they finally did, they only offered their lowest elite level. That wasn't appealing at all. What they could have done was allow me to do a status challenge. They could grant me provisional top-tier status as long as I completed, say six round trips, in a three month period. If I didn't compete all of the flying, elite status would be revoked. It's a fairly simple thing to do and a good way to weed out less loyal travelers.

I get that United and Frontier are two completely different airlines and the treatment of their best customers does, and should, vary significantly. Frontier has done a lot for its elites this year (Free checked baggage, TV, alcohol, etc.). Yet, I think they could do some more things for their better customers.