Frontier and Airtran now offer reciprocal earning and burning. In addition to mileage earning and award redemption, the two airlines are recognizing each others’ elite members with priority checkin, boarding, and security — plus Airtran elites get free DirecTV on Frontier flights. Glad I’m a lifetime Airtran elite.

Update: Randy Petersen has thoughts on the alliance, and offers some important advice:

One caveat, so don’t blame me if you mess up after reading this. The only way this works is if you do indeed book your travel on the airline partner, either Frontier or AirTran, within the airlines Web sites. Going to Expedia, booking a ticket and then trying to get cross program credit is not going to get you anywhere. This is similar to some of the restrictions that hotel programs have in that you won’t earn credit when booking through a third party agent. So, bonus miles and credits beware.



And in closing, there is one more silver lining to this: all those dumpster divers who earned credits in the AirTran program by collecting used drink cups at Wendy’s will have somewhere else now to fly.