One can also still purchase Frontier miles. It's website is selling 1000 miles for $26.88. It's not a bad if one just needs to keep the account active, or say one has 9,000 miles, and needs just 1,000 more to create a standard award ticket.

I saw a DEN-DCA flight fare for $152 but had the 10,000 Standard Award availability. Usually flights $150 or less have 10,000 Standard Award. I've yet to see a $200 fare sold with Standard Award seats.

The best thing about Award is the ability to move the flight/change city pair without a change fee, as long as it's not within 7 days. It's not as easy as southwest where one can do everything online. A CSR still has to do it over the phone, but it's still makes the award somewhat flexible.

It's possible though that following the Spirit inspiration that Frontier might make changing flights more expensive. Delta charges $150 for a change fee, so it's not totally a ULCC thing to charge high for those changes.

Frontier is on the cheap side when it comes to change fees, some airlines (including UA I believe) charge $200 for a change fee.

Spirit charges $120 (via web) $135 (via phone)

Well that's unfortunate. I have about 5,500 F9 miles, I don't foresee flying every six months (F9 doesn't have much of a schedule out of my area) so I think I'll look into those transfer options posted above.

I think this is fair, the friction with customers is the Frontier just continues to widdle down instead of making the complete switch. Many moons ago (10 years?), Frontier really did feel different in the market, I loved it flying with them. The last 5 years have felt like annual beatings by being their fan, I am no longer.

Again, I don't fault them for where they want to go, just get it over with and stop stinging folks along.

This basically amounts to thievery of miles, now they're being taken away after 6 months of inactivity instead of 18 months. End result, less miles are in the system. This can be sugarcoated in a thousand ways I'm sure, but everytime I get an e-mail from Frontier about 'exciting changes' it's just taking more and more away from customers. I don't really care what Spirit or Allegiant do, frankly. I don't fly them but I used to depend on Frontier regularly a couple of years ago.

But Frontier's message is loud and clear that they don't want certain people's business. Point taken and have already switched to flying other airlines!


Anyway I'm glad I already ditched the credit card as I can't trust they won't make further detrimental changes to the program (in fact, it's quite likely given the pattern of the past couple of years). Now just need to burn up my last 22k miles, apparently before September 2015 now... or before they leave some of the "not warm weather vacation destination" places I have been used to flying to (Seattle, Omaha, Branson... oops, Branson already gone!)

Thinking about that Frontier miles balance
 

Well, I certainly am not a Frontier frequent flyer, nor am I planning on becoming one.

I still have 39K F9 miles from the early, innocent days of my miles & points collecting, when I knew nothing of the subtle and comprehensive theories developed here, and indiscriminately got the Frontier CC.

One thing I noticed in F9's e-mail was that "For example, if you don't acquire new miles by September 7, 2015, the miles you've accrued through March 6, 2015 will expire on September 7, 2015 and won't be available for use."

Yet my miles are set to expire well before September 7 2015. Did they get a reprieve, or was the example-writer just out of her/his depth?

Meanwhile, looking at the alternatives for the fast-wilting miles, it appears they can be used for a round trip from the US to Jamaica. Or Costa Rica. Or Cancun.

Or else they can be devoured by the wolves at Points.com who will leave less than a quarter of their current "value." Personally, I would likely choose Amtrak, which always is good for a high value, enjoyable, low carbon redemption.

Current plan: leave the miles available for that tropical trip until near the day of judgment, then, if they remain unused, fling them to the points.com wolves. But can they be trusted to keep their rates at todays level as that day nears?

I don't see what's wrong with the airline cleaning up their liability, and they're hardly pushing every customer away -- only those who want the benefits of a frequent flyer program but are not frequent flyers. If you're not flying twice a year these programs aren't designed for you anyway.

My conversation with Barclay supervisor to cancel the card:

He: why do you want to cancel?

Me: the benefits don't justify the annual fee. I get free checked bag, priority boarding, and priority check in with the other airline cards. This card doesn't have any of those. It doesn't even waive the carry on fee!

He: Hmm, you're right, it doesn't have any of those benefits.

// Brief pause.

He: let me see if I can waive the annual fee.

Go one step further and ask yourself if F9 can be trusted to maintain the exchange ability through points.com. That's something that could change at any time.

Well, the audience on this site is skewed in our thinking. While the programs are indeed called "frequent flyer" programs, their existence lends their due to being loyalty programs as well for the less frequent flyer. There is no draw here for someone flying the occasional 1 or 2 times a year.

I honestly get tired of the semantic argument that "Frequent means you have to fly FREQUENTLY!" Yet there are lots of ways to attain miles and keep miles 'fresh' no matter how often you actually fly. The Credit Card, for example.


So, why the six months expiration? Why not 1 year, 9 months, 3 months? As I mentioned previously, they make this change, end result is less miles in the system and I imagine they save money somewhere down the line by reducing the number of redeemed seats in the future. That is what it is about to Frontier. It's about basically everything but adding any sort of benefit to customers.

And that is the problem I personally have with Frontier. They haphazardly enter markets they are seeking to earn money in with ad campaigns and promises, and abruptly pull out when it doesn't turn out to be as profitable as hoped. There's absolutely no loyalty from Frontier towards their own customers anymore, so very little reason to have any loyalty to them (via earning/using miles, owning the credit card, utilizing their discount club, etc.) In fact, as I alluded, they seem to actively drive some people away. There is a price to pay for doing this as they pursue their new business model. As other businesses (JCPenney is a good example) have found, if you alienate your core customers and drive them away, suddenly your business becomes even more victim to the present circumstances of revenue/sales/traffic/etc.


I'm sure there are some people out there who can deal with this change just fine and still like to fly Frontier. By all means feel free to do so, but just realize there's a price to be paid by taking multiple actions over the course of years to actively push people away from wanting to patronize a business. It's generally not a recipe for long-term success.

Spirit seems to have figured it out, they have no loyalty to their pax, they make money. The big thing I see is that they do drop and add flights frequently, not a fan of that.

I think one of the goals of this move also is so that frequent fliers use their miles up. This helps fill loads in the short term and Frontier will make money on fees.

One can still purchase miles for not too much to maintain miles if flying out somewhere in a 6 month period isn't desired.

In my opinion, the credit card isn't a good deal after the first year relative to other credit card offers. The sign up bonus is the only plus.

I think mile accumulation on the carrier isn't something to seek out, but just a nice bonus that should go along with the low fares.

Even with the $15 award redemption fee (assuming no Frontier credit card), an award ticket can still be a good value as not too hard to attain, with some Classic Plus purchased and traveled flights. 10000 miles can accumulate for an award can happen fast. I've seen it redeemable even when fares are around $100-150.

In terms of what Frontier is offering now that's special and unique in the market, it is the low fares, especially through the sale promotions it frequently runs.

Also, it still highly promotes Classic Plus, Stretch Seating though the IVR/phone system. Maybe these are leftovers from the pre ULCC days but they are heavily advertised that I think it's still premature to say that its on its race to the bottom to be as downscale as Spirit. It also chose 6 months rather than 3 for account mile expiration which to me indicates that Frontier still wants to be in between Spirit and all other carriers.

Regular seats are still more comfortable and seat selection is just $3. Checked bag fee is $15, $10-15 less than most others. Southwest doesn't have these fees but fares can be significantly higher to start.

My disappointment isn't this move, but more of execution of flight scheduling. I understand certain routes like TTN-NAS and IAD-NAS might not have been predicted to book so poorly, but it should have a better idea of what can work domestically.

The cut and run approach of launching routes and selling tickets, but then canceling them after they have been sold and then putting it on the customer to fend for themselves will likely leave a bad impression of the carrier by many. This might result in pax being reluctant to book too far out with the carrier and Frontier needing to rely more heavily on discounted fares to fill flights, and likely less profitably than otherwise.

I thought it was just a bug in their website or that it was still under construction, but they still have no mileage history since they removed it with the new site. Is the only way to figure it out when miles actually expire by calling them? They only have a reservations number, no web form contact relevant to this.

Also not sure, was it 6 months from March 7th, or starting March 7th you have needed to use/earn miles within 6 months?

Edit:
It does have this on my profile: "Expiration: NA" I assumed that was for elite status, which I no longer have. If that's suppose to be for mileage expiration I'd be OK with that, well if it worked.

Farewell, frontier miles!
 

We are out of this program. Keeping track of the miles under the new speedy expiration regime is not worth it now, given that the miles themselves are not very useful to us.

We converted the entire hoard to amtrak via points.com. The rate is lousy, but did preserve some value.