Frontier Miles Award Booking Instructions

For most U.S. travelers, flying with Frontier Airlines can be a bit stressful, since the airline is known to charge high last-minute baggage fees, cancel and delay a ton of its flights and deliver a mediocre in-flight experience. Despite these flaws, many of us keep coming back to Frontier Airlines for one reason only: the extremely low fares. Yes, it’s hard to complain when you can sometimes find fares on Frontier for a little over $20 one-way. That’s the price of a decent meal these days.

One aspect of flying with Frontier that many consumers may not be familiar with, though, is the Frontier Miles frequent flyer program. This program has no airline partners and very few redemption options. However, because the Frontier Miles program uses a fixed, region-based award chart to price award flights on Frontier Airlines, you can actually find pretty good value per Frontier mile.

If you fly Frontier often (which many do because of the extremely low fares), you may as well earn some Frontier miles on your flights, because Frontier Airlines flights can’t be credited to any other frequent flyer program.

In this article, we’re going to walk you through the process of booking award flights through the Frontier Miles program and explain how to sign up for the program and quickly earn miles.

Joining Frontier Miles

Before you start earning and redeeming Frontier miles, you’ll have to be a member of the Frontier Miles program. To enroll in the program, visit the Frontier Airlines website and click the “sign up” button in the top-right corner of the homepage.

From there, a login prompt will appear. Below this prompt, click on the underlined hyperlink that says “sign up.”

Once you click on that link, you’ll be asked to provide an email and create a password to use for your Frontier Miles account. Then, you’ll need to provide some personal information, including your name, gender, date of birth, phone number, country of residence and home address.

Finally, complete your enrollment in the program by clicking the “Join now” button at the bottom of the page. Then, you’ll be assigned a unique Frontier Miles account number, which you can use to sign in to your account and earn miles. We recommend writing this number down somewhere.

How to Earn Frontier Miles

As a member of the Frontier Miles program, you are eligible to both earn and redeem miles. However, before you can purchase an award flight through Frontier Miles, you’ll need to rack up enough miles to pay for an award flight. The lowest rate for an award flight through this program is 5,000 miles (which is the rate for a one-way Value award within the U.S. and Puerto Rico). So, before you book an award flight, you’ll have to have at least that many miles in your account balance.

There are many ways to earn Frontier miles. However, some of the methods of earning Frontier miles are more effective than others. In the following sections, we’re going to briefly explain some of the fastest and easiest ways to earn Frontier miles so you can earn enough for an award flight quickly.

Sign Up for the Frontier Airlines World Mastercard®

The fastest way to earn a lot of Frontier miles for most people is to sign up for Frontier’s co-branded credit card: the Frontier Airlines World Mastercard®. This card has an annual fee of $89. However, if you often fly with Frontier, you should easily be able to offset that annual fee year after year.

The following table includes all of the most important information about the Frontier Airlines World Mastercard:

As you can see, if you were to spend at least $2,500 annually on your Frontier Airlines World Mastercard, you’d receive a $100 flight voucher that instantly offsets this card’s annual fee. Plus, you’ll earn lots of Frontier miles when using your card on Frontier Airlines flights or dining.

On top of the regular spending bonuses offered by this card, the Frontier Airlines World Mastercard also offers a welcome bonus for new cardmembers, which allows you to earn tens of thousands of points in a very short period of time. You can see the welcome offer of this card here.

As you can see, signing up for this credit card and earning the welcome bonus is a great way to earn Frontier miles quickly. With that being said, though, we’d only recommend signing up for this card if you fly with Frontier Airlines often. If not, you’re probably better off with a different airline rewards credit card or a more flexible rewards credit card, such as one that earns Chase Ultimate Rewards, Citi ThankYou Points, American Express Membership Rewards or Capital One Miles.

Flying with Frontier Airlines

Of course, you can also earn Frontier Miles by taking paid flights on Frontier Airlines. Unfortunately, unlike most other frequent flyer programs, you can’t earn Frontier miles by flying with any other airline.

The number of miles you’ll earn when taking flights on Frontier depends on the cost of your airfare (and certain add-ons like seat selection and extra baggage) and your status tier in the Frontier Miles program. Here’s how many miles you’ll earn per dollar spent at each status tier:

• Basic: 10X
• Elite Silver: 12X
• Elite Gold: 14X
• Elite Platinum: 16X
• Elite Diamond: 20X

For example, if you were to book a paid flight with Frontier Airlines that cost $300 (including your seat selection and any extra baggage), you would earn 3,000 miles as a Basic member ($300 x 10 = 3,000 miles). However, if you made the same flight booking and you were an Elite Gold member, you would instead earn 4,200 miles ($300 x 14 = 4,200 miles).

Typically, it takes up to 72 hours after the travel date for miles earned by flying to post to your account balance.

Other Ways to Earn

In addition to the two earning methods described above, you can also earn Frontier Miles in several other ways, including booking hotel stays, renting cars, taking cruises and ordering wine or flowers. However, none of these earning methods are likely to earn you a lot of miles in the long-run.

Nonetheless, if you use the Frontier Miles program often, it’s probably worth looking into these earning methods so you can earn some extra miles once in a while.

How to Book an Award Flight Through Frontier Miles

Now that you’re familiar with how to join the Frontier Miles program and how to earn miles quickly, let’s discuss how you can redeem your miles for award flights. The first thing you’ll need to do is visit the Frontier Airlines website and sign in to your account by clicking the “Log in” button in the top-right corner of the homepage and entering your account credentials.

Once you’re logged in, you’ll return to the homepage, where you’ll see the flight booking tool. In this tool box, just above the “Search” button, you’ll see a “Miles” bubble. To search for award flights instead of cash flights, you simply need to click on this bubble instead of the “Dollars” bubble.

From there, the process of searching for award flights is pretty much the same as searching for cash flights. You can enter your departure and arrival airports, whether you’re flying one-way or round-trip, travel dates and number of travelers. Then, click the green “Search” button.

Next, you’ll see a list of flight results that match your search query. Near the top of the results page, you’ll also be able to see the lowest available rates for two days before and two days after the date you searched for. This is a helpful tool if you have flexible travel dates. And you might be able to save a bunch of miles by moving your flight itinerary a day or two.

Below these dates, you’ll see the option to toggle between four price options: Standard (which is the standard cash rate), Discount Den (which is a subscription program with special discounted cash rates), GoWild (which is a pass you can purchase from Frontier that includes certain flights) and Miles (which is the rate when booking with Frontier miles). Of course, if you’d like to book an award flight, you should stick to the “Miles” option. However, if you’d like to compare the miles rates with the cash rates to make sure that you’re getting good value per mile, this page makes it easy to do so.

Below these rate options, you’ll see a breakdown of what’s included in each fare type, including baggage allowances, change and cancellation fee policies and boarding group.

Finally, below that, you can see the flights that are available to book on your route on your selected date and their respective prices in miles for each fare type.

You can also see the departure time, arrival time, flight duration, flight number and taxes and fees for each of the available flights.

When you find a flight that you want to add to your itinerary, click on the rate you’d like to book (Basic, Economy, Premium or Business). Then, do the same for your return flight (if you’re flying round-trip). Once you’ve selected your flights, click the “Continue” button at the bottom of the page.

If you’ve selected a Basic fare, you’ll be prompted to upgrade to Economy Bundle for an additional charge and will be reminded of the restrictions imposed on Basic fares. If you wish to continue in Basic, click the checkbox and then click the “Continue with Basic” button.

Next, you’ll be asked to input some personal information for any passengers on the itinerary, including name, gender, Frontier Miles membership number (if applicable), date of birth, email address, phone number, country of residence and TSA PreCheck number (if applicable). You can also add special services (such as wheelchair assistance or blindness assistance) and cabin pets on this page.

On the next page, you’ll be asked to select seats for your flights for an additional charge. If you don’t want to pay for seat selection, just click the “Continue” button on the bottom of the page. Then, you’ll be prompted again to select seats and you’ll need to click the “Continue without selecting seats” button.

You’ll then be asked if you want to add additional baggage for an additional charge. If you don’t want to add any more baggage, click the “Continue” button at the bottom of the screen. It’s worth mentioning that if you are planning to bring additional baggage with you, it’s much cheaper to add it beforehand than to pay when you get to the airport (and Frontier almost never forgets to charge you for extra baggage).

After that, you’ll be asked if you want to add travel insurance for an additional charge and if you want to get your boarding pass through the Frontier mobile app or whether you’re going to have an agent print it at the airport (which requires an additional charge of $20).

Finally, you need to add a payment method to cover any applicable taxes and fees and any travel add-ons you selected. Once you’ve done that, click the “Purchase & Accept” button at the bottom of the page to confirm your flight booking.

At that point, you’ll receive a confirmation number for your flight, which you’ll need to check in. You should also receive a confirmation email to the email address you provided.

If you want to cancel your award flight, you must do so before your scheduled departure in order to have your miles refunded. You’ll also have to pay a $75 redeposit fee to have your miles refunded. Any taxes and fees you paid are non-refundable. Since Frontier has such rigid rules around refunding award flight bookings, you should make absolutely sure that you want to take your flight before you book it.

The Bottom Line

All in all, the Frontier Miles isn’t a very exciting frequent flyer program. Frontier Airlines doesn’t have any airline partners, which means that you can’t earn Frontier miles by flying on any airline other than Frontier. And the Frontier Miles program doesn’t have any credit card transfer partners, which means you can’t earn miles through credit card spending (unless you’re willing to sign up for the Frontier Airlines World Mastercard, which we wouldn’t recommend unless you fly on Frontier often).

However, many Americans fly with Frontier often due to its low fares and, since you can’t credit Frontier flights to any other frequent flyer program, you may as well earn some Frontier miles on these flights. Once you have some miles in your account balance, it’s easy to redeem them for award flights through the Frontier Airlines website. And you can often get pretty good value for your Frontier miles by redeeming them for award flights.