Tag Archives for frontier airlines.
On January 22, Frontier Airlines flight 551 from Denver to San Diego diverted to Las Vegas. It should never have taken off from Denver.
A group of Frontier Airlines passengers banded together to rent a van for an overnight drive rather than endure travel on the airline, after their initial 650 mile flight from Orlando to Knoxville was cancelled last Sunday.
The airline told them the next flight they could take would be two days later, and so they decided 10 hours with Hertz would be far better than 48 hours to their destination with an air carrier. And they took to TikTok to document the journey.
Biffle didn’t want to appear customer-unfriendly, and wasn’t willing to aggressively defend their ultra low cost business model.
Airline call center hold times often got long before the pandemic, one of the more popular features I’ve covered is ways around long hold times – like calling American Airlines foreign call centers, or ringing up Delta’s close-in travel hotline.
But you can always wait – whether it’s an hour, five hours or 40 hours – to reach an agent to help sort out a problem with your ticket, when your flight is cancelled or maybe your reservation just didn’t get ticketed properly. Always, at least, except at Frontier Airlines which has just eliminated telephone customer service.
Frontier Airlines is offering its “GoWild!” unlimited flying pass for $599 the first year. If you don’t cancel it will auto-renew for $1999 the second year. It’s a brilliant way for the airline to monetize seats that are otherwise-likely to go empty, and can be a great deal for travelers living in major Frontier cities like Denver, Orlando and Las Vegas.
This lets you buy an unlimited number of domestic U.S. flights, booked the day prior to travel, for just $0.01 in airfare plus taxes and fees (or in most cases less than $15 per flight).
The discount applies only to base fare and Frontier pricing is mostly about taxes and fees, including mandatory booking fees. So you may not be saving as much as you think in percentage terms. Fronter base fares aren’t most of the cost of a ticket, after all.
But this is a very good deal indeed for those with status, including those who took advantage of status matches and who have free Frontier status (and likely won’t pay add-on fees as a result).
JetBlue wants to buy Spirit for parts – gates, slots (though they’d divest many of those), pilots and planes. And they’re willing to pay $400 million for the chance to get the deal to close in the face of government opposition.
Meanwhile the most likely way to get regulatory approval is to trade the American Airlines joint venture, which the federal government is also opposing. If they can make that deal quickly, they can presumably have Spirit.
Spirit Airlines sent me their release indicating that tomorrow will not be the day that shareholders vote on whether to sell to Frontier Airlines.
Instead the shareholder meeting will be adjourned and reconvened on July 8. Spirit wouldn’t do this if all their ducks were lined up to gain approval for the Frontier deal that their board has endorsed.
JetBlue’s proposed deal to acquire Spirit Airlines is better for Spirit shareholders than Frontier’s is. Spirit management supports the Frontier deal, and it will probably be approved. JetBlue is offering 40% more for Spirit Airlines than Frontier is. With Spirit’s shares falling to slightly below Frontier’s offer, the market thinks the successful suitor will be Frontier, not JetBlue.
However a Frontier deal for Spirit is actually better for consumers, even though JetBlue’s product is better than the one offered by either airline.
When Frontier Airlines raised its offer to buy Spirit Airlines and gave the Spirit Airlines board cover to again endorse a merger between the two airlines (walking away from a much bigger offer from JetBlue that faces greater anti-trust scrutiny) it seemed like game over. The new offer even got the endorsement from two independent proxy advisory firms.
JetBlue isn’t done though. They’ve come out with a new, increased offer in advance of Thursday’s Spirit Airlines shareholders meeting, a last ditch effort.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
