Frontier Airlines won’t offer you business class award tickets to the Seychelles. But if you live in a Frontier Airlines city, and you’re reasonably likely to fly them, the credit card can be a great deal because every purchase on the card counts towards elite status with $1 of spend earning 1 elite qualifying mile.

And Frontier’s elite program offers real benefits – top tier 100,000 mile flyers see no fees at all, which is impressive with a fee-based ultra-low cost carrier.

Barclays and Frontier have done better than any other airline card, I think, working with what they’ve got and ensuring that the Frontier Airlines World Mastercard really rides on the rails of the loyalty program.

And they’ve just announced their best-even initial bonus offer: no annual fee the first year, and 50,000 points after $500 in purchases within 90 days. When the card was first revamped two years ago the offer was 40,000 miles. Most recently it has been 50,000 miles – but both with both offers offers the card’s $79 annual fee has applied in the first year, so this new offer is ‘$79 better’.

Earning with the card is: 5x miles on purchases at flyfrontier.com; 3x miles on restaurant purchases; 1x miles on all other purchases. Additionally, spend $2500 on the card each account year and receive a $100 flight voucher. This covers the card’s annual fee, and provides an extra ~1% rebate value on that $2500 spend.

The card has no foreign transaction fees and comes with Zone 2 boarding when flying Frontier. It also gives you access to family pooling of points with up to eight people.

But the real value comes in earning elite status through card spend. You can earn standard elite status after $20,000 spend on the card in a year, or a combination of flying and card spend to earn 20,000 total qualifying miles.

• Priority check-in, zone 1 boarding and priority security
  
• Free carry on bag
  
• Advance seat assignment, including extra legroom seats at check-in if available
  
• Call center fees, close-in award booking fees, unaccompanied minor fees, same day confirmed change fees, standby fees all waived
  
• Spend extra miles for last seat award availability

A 50,000 mile level — achievable through flights or spend or a combination also now provides “family seating and seat assignment for the cardmember and eight travelling companions on the same reservation.”

Spend $100,000 on the card or fly 100,000 (or a combination) and receive ‘the WORKS’ bundle including up to 8 travel companions on the same reservation.

• Free carry on bag
  
• Free checked bag
  
• Free seat selection including extra legroom seats
  
• Free refunds and flight changes

Copyright: zhukovsky / 123RF Stock Photo

Free refunds. No one matches that. Look, you’re not going to get first class upgrades. Frontier doesn’t have a first class. They don’t have inflight internet either. They’re an ultra-low cost carrier. But they’re cheap to fly, and doubly so for elites who get many of those extra fees waived. So this is a strategically useful play for a certain type of customer.