A few weeks ago, Frontier and Barclays hosted my family and I in Denver for a weekend to discuss some upcoming changes to the Frontier loyalty program and the Barclay Frontier Airlines World Mastercard. I wrote a bit a few weeks ago about some of the upcoming changes but I wanted to cover it again now that the changes are officially live.
Changes to the Barclays Frontier Airlines World Mastercard
The new Barclays Frontier Airlines World Mastercard still has a welcome offer of 40,000 miles after spending $500 on the card in the first 90 days. The annual fee is up slightly to $79 (not waived the first year). It now earns 5 miles on Frontier airfare purchases, 3 miles per dollar at restaurants and 1 mile everywhere else, but to help offset the fee, you also get a $100 Frontier voucher each year if you spend $2500 on the card. You also get Zone 2 priority boarding and a waiver of the award redemption fee.
So far, nothing earth shattering with the card…. but wait… there’s more (as they say)
Unique features of the new Barclays Frontier Airlines World Mastercard
Frontier is now the only US airline where every dollar spent on the co-branded credit card counts as an elite qualifying dollar. This is something that no other co-branded credit card offers
Coupled with the changes to the Frontier Miles program (including adding 2 new levels of elite status; see below), it opens a possibly intriguing way to get some elite status with Frontier that actually makes a difference. So if you have the ability to have a high amount of spend, you can get elite status on Frontier SOLELY from spending! No flying actually even necessary (though it’s nice that you still earn one mile per mile flown, making those 1200 mile $29 fares pretty attractive to top off status)
Another new feature is that all cardholders and elite members will unlock family pooling where you can pool miles from up to 8 family members (family defined quite loosely – basically however you want to define family).
Changes to the myFRONTIER Miles loyalty program
Frontier is now changing the name of their loyalty program to Frontier Miles and adding 2 new levels of elite status
Again, you earn one elite qualifying dollar for
- Every mile you fly on Frontier AND
- Every dollar you spend on the cobranded credit card.
Getting the Works bundle for your entire family at the Elite 100K level suddenly makes flying Frontier with a family a lot less of a pain point! Also at the 100K level ALL YOUR FLIGHTS ARE NOW REFUNDABLE! Even at the 20K level you’re getting a free carryon bag and seat assignment (with stretch seating available at check-in)
Award flights on Frontier start at 10,000 miles
My take on the changes
It’s clear that flying Frontier is not for everyone, and this will continue to be the same. I’m fine with that because we don’t need another airline with an exact duplicate of all the other carriers. After all, it seems that Delta, American and United just seem to copy each others’ frequent flier programs :-D.
I understand that elite status and focusing on Frontier loyalty programs will not be for everyone for sure, and even FLYING Frontier will not make sense for everyone, but I can definitely see some areas where it will make a lot of sense
For more information on the changes to Frontier and Barclays, you can check out Angelina Travels, Mommy Points, Pizza in Motion, View from the Wing
What are your thoughts on flying Frontier and these upcoming changes? Share on our free miles and points Facebook group or leave it in the comments
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Dan Miller travels with his wife and 6 (SIX!) children. He loves to help families travel for free / cheap, especially larger families. If you are looking for help, drop him an email at 
Do you think you could use that status to status match to other programs?
I doubt Frontier status matches anywhere else because it is called an ultra low cost airline for a reason. Get bumped or delayed and NO other airline accepts your ticket.
Not for everyone is correct. For years I had been an Ascent, Summit and then Elite tier flyer amassing over 200,000 leisure miles when Frontier had 86 daily flights from Milwaukee. When they cut back here they really cut back, to 1. Yes, 1. I burned most of my miles still taking the 1 flight daily to Denver and connecting from there. Since then with all the charges added for everything, the spotty schedule of 1 flight a day a couple times per week I’m glad I made that decision. They’ve now ramped up a schedule here but still the few times a week to vacation destinations of no interest to me. Southwest! The credit card deal looks appealing but a 100,000 point deal won’t be by a Frontier flyer. If you’re looking for cheap tickets you won’t be spending enough to gain that top level.
We have been trying to redeem our Frontier miles for a flight from PHX to DCA and a return flight from BOS to PHX for the summer of 2024. We go to Frontier’s website and go the month and then put in our cities and dates and we get no reasonable options !!!! From Phoenix it says we would travel to Denver then sit there for upwards of 15 hours to 1.5 days until there is a flight we can book to now still go all the way to Washington DC from Denver !!!! We feel cheated that we took out the Frontier Credit Card and put the required charges on the card and now we can’t use the miles because they make it so unreasonable that we cannot use them !! Any ideas ? Thanks