Frontier Woos The High-Dollar Traveler with First Class, Upgrades

Frontier continues to make sweeping changes to its business model as it searches for profitability, and now, it’s going upscale. The airline this week rolled out First Class along with the promise of upgrades and more for its elite frequent fliers. This is a strange development in the airline’s quest to get back to profitability.

When Frontier started making changes, it walked away from the a la carte model and moved more toward bundled fares that would in theory make it quicker and simpler for people to get what they wanted. This move required people to buy up to higher bundles for it to make any sense, but with the old model not working, Frontier thought it was worth a go. Apparently Spirit came to the same conclusion, because it did the exact same thing.

After the change, in Q3 2024, Frontier’s revenue per passenger was $105.83, down 8 percent from the previous year’s $114.71. This was not welcome news, so the airline is trying to find more ways to get that number up. So that’s why we see this latest announcement, but it also allows us to read the tea leaves on how things have been going.

Introducing First Class

Frontier had previously tried to make extra money off its existing real estate. It called the first two rows at the front of the airplane UpFront Plus. These rows were regular coach seats with extra legroom, but the middle seat would be blocked. The idea was that this empty middle along with the forward position on the aircraft would make it worthwhile for the window and aisle people to pay enough to justify the block.

Everything Frontier has said about this has been positive, but now it’s going to replace those two rows with First Class seating. That suggests UpFront Plus was not working as hoped, and this is a tougher change than you might think.

The new First Class will look like this:

Oh wait, that’s not it. It’s actually this:

It looks like a, ahem, big front seat. But the math is where I get confused here. Right now, I believe the extra legroom seats have 31 inches of pitch. (It’s 28 inches in the regular rows.) So, if you take those two rows out up front and put a big seat in, how much pitch do you need? As of now, there is only one other row with extra legroom in front of the wing on the entire fleet. Here’s a sample:

Let’s make the assumption that these new First Class seats have the same thickness as coach. That’s unlikely to be true, but it’ll illustrate the point. If the two front rows are replaced with First Class and then the third row goes back to regular pitch, that means you could get 32.5″ of pitch in the first two rows. If the seat is thicker, you get even less. This doesn’t seem workable.

What seems more likely is that Frontier has to give around 36-37 inches of pitch, what Spirit offers in its Big Front Seat, to make it a real First Class experience. This means you probably need to remove a row in front of the wing and then likely create more extra legroom rows.

That might not matter in a world where Frontier has a load factor problem, but it does mean unit costs will take a hit with six fewer seats on the airplane. If the UpFront Plus seating didn’t pay for itself, will First Class really do it? And will it be enough to even bother with the extra complexity of it all? I am far from convinced, but it seems like a play to really appeal to the more regular flier.

Making it Worth Becoming an Elite

The other round of changes involved three new improvements — like, real improvements, not when airlines pretend that terrible things are improvements — for the airline’s elite frequent fliers.

Platinum and Diamond members get Frontier’s version of Southwest’s companion pass starting in mid-2025. Just fly, and you can bring a companion — doesn’t have to be the same person each time — along for just the government taxes and fees on any trip. The companion just has to be a member of the Frontier Miles program, and it has to be booked at the same time as the primary traveler. Gold, Platinum, and Diamond members get free space-available upgrades into the premium cabin starting early-2025. It’s not clear how early before departure those will clear. All members will be able to use their miles to pay for ancillaries and not just the base fare starting in mid-2025.

It always seems strange to me that someone would be an elite with Frontier except in a handful of cities where there is ample service, but perhaps this is a complement to the new “base” model where it has a handful of cities with aircraft based in them. If it wants to keep growing those cities, it will be able to offer more opportunities for people to fly the airline, so maybe more people can become elite.

The program itself doesn’t make it all that hard to get elite status, in theory. If you spend $1,000 in a year, you get Silver, $2,000 gets you Gold, you’ll be Platinum at $5,000, and then $10,000 makes you Diamond. That sounds tiny compared to other airlines, but Frontier doesn’t exactly have $10,000 business class fares like the network carriers do. To spend $10,000 a year on Frontier, you’re flying a whole lot on that airline. Of course, once you qualify, it’s easier to stay elite thanks to bonuses. You’ll only need to spend $5,000 a year going forward once you reach Diamond.

Perhaps what this is really driving at is Frontier wants you to get the credit card. If you do, you start off with Gold status right away. Then each dollar you spend on the card counts toward elite status. Is it possible that all of these changes are just an elaborate ploy to get sign-ups for the card? Yes, yes it is. The math doesn’t seem to make all that much sense unless you start to realize how this will lock someone into flying Frontier. If they feel locked in, they are more likely to get the credit card. We’ve seen this movie before.

So, instead of making money on fare, Frontier is really angling to make more ancillary money through credit card signups. CEO Barry Biffle said he wanted to grow loyalty revenues on the last earnings call. And he has also said he looks at total revenue per passenger as his metric. What components make up that number don’t really matter.

Of course, this requires Frontier to be able to be useful to enough passengers on a regular basis to get them to start this elite journey with the airline. This feels like a strange twist for an airline that used to compete on price above all.