Roughly six months ago I picked up the Frontier Airlines MasterCard on a whim. I had applied for the Wyndham Rewards Visa (with a decent 45,000 point sign-up offer and 15,000 annual bonus), and I figured I might try for a second card in the same day (since the credit pulls will combine into one). I was instantly approved. I met the minimum spending requirement within a month and quickly forgot about the miles.

Luckily for me, I came across a tidbit last month that clued me into the Frontier’s very short 6-month expiration policy on their miles. I could bypass this by spending on the card, but instead I decided that I would burn them on a Spring trip to visit some of my wife’s extended family. I thought this would be an easy use of the miles with a reasonable (but not stellar) return in value. But no, it had to be a booking headache.

Frontier. “Low Fares Done Right.” Might be true….but they sure don’t do loyalty programs right. Image courtesy of Frontier.

First, though, here is a little background on Frontier. Based in Denver, the airline sits somewhere about spot #10 on the list of U.S. airlines, flying to 59 destinations, mostly domestic. The most important thing to remember, though, is that they are a budget airline. They charge for everything. Checked bag? Fee. Oh, the carry-on bag? Fee for that, too. Reserved seats together? That’ll be several dollars per person. And the list goes on.

I knew this going into getting a Frontier card. I figured it we could get away with a single large checked bag for a vacation, we could fly for $11.20 + the bag fee each way. Not bad for two people under any circumstances. For a bulk of Frontier flight options (even considering their crazy sales), we would be saving a a good amount of money on a round-trip, even after the $69 fee on the card.

Or so I thought. That’s when the booking process made me want to punch my computer and then light it on fire. The whole ordeal lasted a couple days and almost enticed me into paying cash for a United flight simply out of spite. Only reason I didn’t was because I would still be sitting on my Frontier “NeverReturn” miles. Here is why I got so worked up:

Image courtesy of Yahoo.

1. The “award booking fee”. This was the icing on the cake, and tops my list of complaints. I know that both United and American have “close-in” award fees, but these only take effect if you book within three weeks of departure. Somewhat constraining, but any real planning lets you work around them easily. Frontier has a similar policy, charging $15 per person, but they apply it up to 180 days before your departure date!!!!! It’s insane. And here is the devilish part: Frontier’s booking calendar often doesn’t push much past 180 days, and sometimes it doesn’t. In essence, they end up charging you $15 for each leg of your award ticket. Not sure if the fee is $30 per round-trip or still $15, but I couldn’t check since I was booking two one-way legs.
2. Only red-eye West-to-East Coast availability. If we were going somewhere extremely cool, I wouldn’t mind a red-eye flight. But just to get across America? No thanks. Flying 7:15 p.m. to 6:00 a.m with a connection in Denver sounds awful. I was looking at going to either Miami or Jupiter, Florida, but I guess a trip to the sunshine state will have to wait. I knew Frontier didn’t offer a lot of route options, but that only red-eye routes would show up a bulk of the time was a surprise.
3. Almost all the ‘good’ flights cost 20,000 miles per person one-way. This bugged me the most. The few better flights I found from SFO to the east were almost invariably priced at the 20,000 mile level. Charging me 10,000 miles, plus $15, plus a bag fee, for a flight with a cash price of $169 already seems to be enough. But no, that nice daytime flight back from Miami to San Francisco costs 20,000 miles. Actually, so many options cost 20,000 miles per person each way, that I would say that this is the standard cost. Really lame.

In addition to my frustration with the Frontier and the EarlyReturns program, browser issues plagued me as well. It literally took me three sessions over three days to settle on flights that fit our schedule. It caused so much mental anguish that I decided that I will never again bother with Frontier miles. The return on investment and time-frame for redemption make it totally pointless. I am not saying I will never fly Frontier…if they have a $19 or even $49 fare that gets me where I want to go, I would be all over it. But only to save my cash and earn 3 miles/$ on my Amex Premium Rewards Gold card. Not because I am interested in Frontier miles.

All in all we ended up paying $215, 40,000 Frontier miles, and ~4,000 Southwest miles for a three leg route on Frontier and Southwest from SFO -> SAN -> DEN -> SFO. The lowest flights for the same period were on United for $294 per person, and would have earned miles. Doing the math and taking into account the card fee, this left me with a terrible overall 0.7 cents/mile redemption rate. Bottom line: don’t bother with Frontier EarlyReturns. There are plenty of other lucrative loyalty programs out there.