Frontier fees
Feb 28, 2011 | 9:28 am
#1
Original Poster
Join Date: Jan 2008
Posts: 3,638
Frontier fees
Is it true that F9 is reviewing their fees, i.e. change fees, to become more competitive in the market, against players such as SWA and FL?
With the new website debuting within the next month or two, enabling customers to change many reservations on the site, perhaps a reduced change fee should apply for those not phoning the call center for assistance with those changes.
What would be fairer or more competitive F9 fees in this economic climate?
With the new website debuting within the next month or two, enabling customers to change many reservations on the site, perhaps a reduced change fee should apply for those not phoning the call center for assistance with those changes.
What would be fairer or more competitive F9 fees in this economic climate?
Feb 28, 2011 | 10:22 am
#2
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: LAS-DEN
Programs: WN CP & B-list. Using UA more these days. Former:F9-Ascent AA-Plat CO-Gold TWA-Elite
Posts: 1,740
Change fees and bag fees (or lack thereof) are what keep me over at Southwest. You can get rid of the bag fees at Frontier by either making status (I can't fly that much) or by buying the Classic Fare. If I ever did have to fly on Frontier because a destination wasn't served by Southwest (ANC comes to mind), I'd buy Classic because for about $20 extra, you get two free bags and direct TV. It also reduces the change fee, I think, but not to ZERO.
No change fee is a big deal with me. It makes life so flexible and easy.
IMO and IME open seating improves my chances of an open middle seat, but YMMV.
Depending on your destination and flying patterns, Southwest, even with their changes in Rapid Rewards 2.0, offers more than Frontier.
Consider that at Frontier, a flight from Denver to Las Vegas is 629 miles. You need to do that 25,000 / 629 = 40 one way segments to get a free trip.
At Southwest, under the new program starting March 1, if you pay $80 for each flight, you get 80 x 6 = 480 points for each flight. If you do that 20 times, you have earned 480 x 20 = 9,600 points. Those can be redeemed at 60 points per dollar, which equals $160 of flight credit, or one round trip. For DEN-LAS, that is twice as good as Frontier.
However, it is certainly true that if you are flying longer distances, the edge shifts towards Frontier. DEN-PHL is 1,558 miles and you'd need just over 16 one-ways for a free trip. You'd still need 20 at segments at Southwest.
My opinion: $0 change fees and $0 bag fees. It would give them a fighting chance against Southwest. For destinations not served by Southwest, compare prices to United and set accordingly.
No change fee is a big deal with me. It makes life so flexible and easy.
IMO and IME open seating improves my chances of an open middle seat, but YMMV.
Depending on your destination and flying patterns, Southwest, even with their changes in Rapid Rewards 2.0, offers more than Frontier.
Consider that at Frontier, a flight from Denver to Las Vegas is 629 miles. You need to do that 25,000 / 629 = 40 one way segments to get a free trip.
At Southwest, under the new program starting March 1, if you pay $80 for each flight, you get 80 x 6 = 480 points for each flight. If you do that 20 times, you have earned 480 x 20 = 9,600 points. Those can be redeemed at 60 points per dollar, which equals $160 of flight credit, or one round trip. For DEN-LAS, that is twice as good as Frontier.
However, it is certainly true that if you are flying longer distances, the edge shifts towards Frontier. DEN-PHL is 1,558 miles and you'd need just over 16 one-ways for a free trip. You'd still need 20 at segments at Southwest.
My opinion: $0 change fees and $0 bag fees. It would give them a fighting chance against Southwest. For destinations not served by Southwest, compare prices to United and set accordingly.
Feb 28, 2011 | 9:03 pm
#3
Join Date: Dec 2009
Location: MKE
Programs: Delta Skymiles, Frontier EarlyReturns Summit
Posts: 766
I do agree though that Frontier should reconsider their fees. Making the first bag free would be a good balance of helping customers but not losing all of the ancillary revenue. It comes down to if they think they can sell enough extra tickets to offset the revenue loss. I don't think that's the way they'll go though. I think you'll see frontier pushing the classic tickets even more going forward. I think their classic for $10 promotion last year was a great success and I would bet they try more promotions like that this year.
Mar 2, 2011 | 10:28 pm
#4
Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: LAS-DEN
Programs: WN CP & B-list. Using UA more these days. Former:F9-Ascent AA-Plat CO-Gold TWA-Elite
Posts: 1,740
Except that at Frontier you only need 20 segments for status: http://www.frontierairlines.com/fron...tier-levels.do
I do agree though that Frontier should reconsider their fees. Making the first bag free would be a good balance of helping customers but not losing all of the ancillary revenue. It comes down to if they think they can sell enough extra tickets to offset the revenue loss. I don't think that's the way they'll go though. I think you'll see frontier pushing the classic tickets even more going forward. I think their classic for $10 promotion last year was a great success and I would bet they try more promotions like that this year.
I do agree though that Frontier should reconsider their fees. Making the first bag free would be a good balance of helping customers but not losing all of the ancillary revenue. It comes down to if they think they can sell enough extra tickets to offset the revenue loss. I don't think that's the way they'll go though. I think you'll see frontier pushing the classic tickets even more going forward. I think their classic for $10 promotion last year was a great success and I would bet they try more promotions like that this year.