Rapidly growing Frontier Airlines revamps loyalty program

Frontier Airlines, a deep-discount commercial airline serving Las Vegas, has overhauled its loyalty program with a system designed for customers to be rewarded faster by crediting members for every transaction they make through the program.

Denver-based Frontier, the No. 6 passenger carrier at Harry Reid International Airport with more than 300,000 passengers per month, redesigned its Frontier Miles Frequent Flier Program with a four-tiered system that can assure a free flight with as few as four ticket purchases.

“We’ve been studying this for a while,” said Frontier CEO Barry Biffle in an interview with the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

“People had bought a lot of ancillary products and services, and they didn’t really get credit for that,” he said. “We wanted to make sure that people were rewarded for those expenditures.”

Frontier is one of the fastest-growing airlines at Reid International. In the past two years, the airline has grown to offer an average 44 daily flights to 30 destinations. Several Frontier flights offer one to five flights a week to some cities, but there are five daily flights to its Denver hub where passengers can connect to any city in the Frontier system.

The airline has 775 pilots, flight attendants and airport staff based in Las Vegas, and it contracts with 260 third-party ground operations, ticket counter staff and gate agents for Frontier.

“Las Vegas is big for us,” Biffle said. We have a lot of employees and customers there, and we’ve invested a significant amount of aircraft into that market as a result. We expect to continue to grow for years to come and be a big part of that community.”

Loyalty program details

Biffle said that even with Frontier’s low-cost structure, members of the revised loyalty program will be able to accumulate mileage points faster and, in turn, be able to convert those to ticket purchases.

The revamped Frontier Miles program began Tuesday, and customers will be able to make purchases through it beginning in January. The airline has begun converting existing customer mileage points to the new program so that existing customers won’t lose any benefits.

The new program has four tiers instead of the three previous: Silver, Gold, Platinum and Diamond.

The tiers have “status” mileage thresholds of 10,000, 20,000, 50,000 and 100,000 miles, respectively. Holders of membership in each tier get free advance seat assignments; no change or cancellation fees, even if a change is made less than a week before the flight; priority boarding and priority customer care. Families are able to pool their miles for purchases.

For members, the higher the status, the faster benefits accrue, and the higher the tier level, the more benefits are given.

Miles accrue based on dollars spent on Frontier products — including flights, bags, seat assignments and fare bundles. The standard is 10 miles accrued for every dollar spent and mileage multipliers increase at every status level up to 20 miles for every dollar spent.

“It may come across as complicated because there’s so much value,” Biffle said. “It’s definitely a mouthful, but that’s why I said if you buy three or four tickets, and let’s say you spend $1,000 a year on travel or at least $10,000 a year on a credit card, no one is going to deliver you the amount of value that we will deliver to you.”

Contact Richard N. Velotta at rvelotta@reviewjournal.com or 702-477-3893. Follow @RickVelotta on X.