Summit members can still select Stretch Seating at the time of booking. The chart is somewhat confusing. On the first link you provided (http://www.flyfrontier.com/plan-book/fare-options), it still shows Summit members being able to select Stretch seats at booking...but it's on the second row. It reads "Eligible at purchase or at check-in." The first row is what makes the chart confusing.

Yes, we can book Southwest on our corporate travel site.

Part of a growing trend to reduce expenses...

http://247wallst.com/2012/09/12/trav...rce=motleyfool

We're required to use the corporate booking tool, and this message was loaded recently about the Frontier seating change:

No indication of frequent flyer earnings changes here, although I'm not surprised since the corporate travel service isn't concerned about our loyalty points.

As for Southwest (since someone else asked about it in relation to a corporate booking tool) we've had it available right along with other flights for a number of years. However it appears to be a separate system interfaced in, because in some ways it displays Southwest like all other airlines, but in other ways you have to "click through" to get comparable information. There are certain different rules for how to handle changes, cancelations, and refunds compared to other airlines as well. But it's better than a handful of years back when booking Southwest could not be handled with the online tool.

My guess is that this is a cost cutting tool, since I guarantee that Tavelocity etc. take a bigger dollar amount from the Frontier ticket than the value of 50% of the flight's length in ER miles.

As for the URL, as was pointed out earlier, flyfrontier.com has worked for years now. I've used it in place of frontierairlines.com for most of the past five years (though, thanks to being based out of Austin now and parents putting everything on their WN RR card, I've been flying Southwest more recently).

The decrease in reward mile prices is a welcome somewhat-blast-from-the-past; in 2008 or thereabouts I booked a RT flight for 15k miles (one-ways were 10k).

Also, I thought that all ER reward tickets in recent history were de facto Economy tix. I can almost swear that I saw the $ sign next to checking bags #1 and #2 on the F9 site when I checked in for my most recent (FAI-DEN) flight with them. I'm not complaining or anything...12.5k miles for a 2500-mile, $210-ish one-way is a good deal in my book.

This is more welcome news regarding advance seating, but the cut in mileage earning capability through a third-party site is going to affect Ascent and Summit elites, isn't it?

How will I be able to keep my status for the next year when I only earn 50% of the miles because of the ticket booking change? Unless they lower the elite level mileage qualification by 50%, which I didn't read anything about. I'm not going to be flying 50K miles in 2013 with any one airline, including Frontier, so bye-bye F9 Summit status. I probably won't fly 30K either, so any of my status options end after next year.

I think what this really means is that they are phasing out the elite program by making it impossible to qualify for it unless you buy your tickets through them. It looks like the loyal business traveler really has no role in their future plans. It's so frustrating to go out of your way to support an airline, get rewarded for doing it (I do love the priority boarding/check-in, stretch upgrade and free bags), then have them make a change like this that torpedoes the future... which now looks more like Southwest for me. And won't that eventually lead to another bitter end for Frontier?

:td:

How many business travelers really need to book through a company program? I guess I never thought about it, everyplace I have ever worked, I've booked my own travel. I would thnk the vast majority of loyal business travelers will nt be affected by this-though, like using a CLC card for hotels and losing those points, I can see how this is a bad deal for some.

I am coming over from DL for my Western travel, and staying with DL for the markets F9 doesn't go that I do (Idaho and Alabama mostly). With only 30,000 miles needed for Summit, I expect to be able to keep Gold on DL AND Summit on Frontier, looks to me like hey have a pretty good program. I'm excited to try it out!

Only 25000 miles needed for Summit (or 30 segments)

Right, sorry, that's what I meant-Even better! Vielen dank!

Tough to know. I work for a low-tier Fortune-500 company and it's been quite a few years that we've been required to use the travel program. With the exception of emergency circumstance, our policy states that air fare booked via another means will not be reimbursed.

There are a few reasons why companies would do this. Travel managment tools:

--Gather and compile data so companies get an accurate picture of how travel dollars are being spent
--Allow better policing of policies, likely reducing travel costs
--Enforce use of preferred travel companies, helping to meet volume tiers for corporate contracts
--Integrate with expense tracking systems to improve efficiency
--Polices usage policies for corporate travel charge cards.

At least that's what's all supposed to happen. And travel management tool companies get paid serious money for this service.

There's really no way of knowing (from our side) what portion of Frontier's travelers are required to use such a travel system. I would guess that smaller companies are far less likely than big ones to have this. Some of those larger companies may or may not have Frontier contracts (we do) and so if they don't they may already not be flying Frontier.

Being MKE-based, the small silver lining in the huge pulldown is that I'm not in a position to worry about the change and the prospect of earning less credit for not being able to book work travel at their website.

I work for a fairly big company ($1 bil yearly rev) but there are few travelers like me who live in Colorado. We don't have the $$ budget here to do a Frontier deal. Since we're based in Boston, Jet Blue and USAirways are the biggies. I have to book through our Concur Travel site or I don't get reimbursed. So I'll make Summit this year, but next year it will not be a priority to fly F9 like it was last year and this year because I won't qualify again with the 50% miles. So I'll have to get status elsewhere :mad:

Wow this is a bummer. Just booked a couple of flights on F9 on my corporate travel site yesterday and when I view the itinerary on the frontier website it says
This along with the CAK pullout might be the end of F9 for me. I can't give up miles like that!

Update:
Cancelled those two tickets since within 24 hours. Tried booking flights to get a higher fare class. The system we use is pretty inflexible as far as selecting specific fare classes. Selecting "No Penalty" as fare type gets me a ticket that qualifies for 150% credit (see below) BUT at a fare of 4x the lowest fare I booked previously and 2x the highest fare shown on the Frontier website.

I don't think my employer or client would approve of that just to get full credit.

Two Summits and counting
 

SO... that's at least two Summits going elsewhere after next year. Anybody listening at F9?

We also use Concur at work but also use swabiz (Southwest Business) since WN is not shown on Concur. I doubt F9 is big enough though to make it past corporate travel departments but they could at least look at the WN model and create a business web site.
I do not use Concur for F9 for a while already since I had too many issues with not getting stretch seats and then having to call in all the time. But this only works because I am high enough up the food chain to get away with it and do have a company credit card that I can use for it.
One of the unintended consequences with this move is that F9 will loose business travelers. The F9 miles are already worth less then the major carriers and on top if it I do get less miles (I get double on UA and AA rather then 50% bonus) and if this would be cut now again in 1/2 this would be bad news.

What is there to hear - or do you think Frontier did not know this would happen?