Frontier dropping Expedia
 

Just saw this this morning:

http://www.bizjournals.com/denver/ne...s-expedia.html


I guess I can understand why they want to steer people to booking through their website. However I'll never forget the time I was trying to book a route like SEA-BKG (the DEN-BKG route can be premium-priced esp. during the Summer months) and the FlyFrontier website had a much-higher price while Priceline had a steep discount on the same route to the tune of several hundred dollars cheaper. I booked from Priceline needless to say, they put us in the very back row "next to the bathroom with no reclining" seats but with the money I saved, didn't really mind...

Point being that Frontier will probably still sometimes put up competitive ticket prices on the aggregators that are cheaper than what's on their website. It pays to check the prices just to be sure. I usually check FlyFrontier first and then double-check a couple of places like Priceline, Travelocity, etc. Though the cutback of frequent flier miles is a slight disappointment - in the above mentioned flight I got full double miles through my Frontier Mastercard for the purchase as well as full mileage for the trip itself, guess we won't see that anymore...


Any thoughts about this development? Is Frontier going to dump other booking sites in the future and try to move to a Southwest-like model?

Did the Priceline fare hide the name of the airline, or was it showing Frontier? If the latter, did you try to use the Best Fare Guarantee?

http://www.flyfrontier.com/customer-...fare-guarantee

No the price was shown with Frontier on it on the main Priceline website (I didn't use "Name your own price", just regular flight search).

As for the Best Fare Guarantee, I forgot about this system, I guess I would wonder what happens if you submit the claim form and by the time they process it the cheap-priced tickets from Priceline are gone. Hopefully that isn't an issue as the claim form just takes a screenshot as evidence... maybe next time this happens I will try it. although you do that at the risk of not getting the other tickets so if they reject your claim then you might be out of luck eh?


Not that this is a situation I have happen to me regularly, so it could have just been a fluke for all I know. Lately it seems like some of the "discount" airlines like Frontier and Southwest (especially Southwest) are not that discounted at all, depending on the time of year and the destination you're flying to. (and I mean in comparison to other flights, not as some kind of indicator that prices are higher this year and whatnot)

I seem to find lower prices on United for our regular destinations (maybe they have to price them lower because the experience isn't necessarily that good with United), it's a little strange because United never seemed to compete much on price before the merger.


Still I always try to fly Frontier when the prices are comparable to what else is out there. Thanks for the tip!

Please let us know if you do see something like this again, what the results are. I am curious how their different fare classes work, if they can claim that what you were seeing on PL was actually a different kind of fare and deny it, or if they'll admit if it was an error. Their Facebook seem seems pretty responsive so you can always escalate there if unsatisfied with a response.