Ed Perkins on Travel: Frontier’s Pass—Good Deal?

This deal might be great for you if you have a lot of time. Dreamstime/TNS

Frontier Airlines is selling its annual fly-all-you-want “GoWild!” pass covering travel May 1, 2023, through April 30, 2025, for $499, a $100 reduction from the regular price. The offer remains open “as long as supplies last,” and if you buy by Tuesday, Nov. 28, you also get Silver Elite status for the year—which doesn’t do you much good. Sorry for the late notice, but weekly columns can’t always keep you right up to date.

As far as I know, Frontier is the only U.S. airline offering a fly-all-you-want pass, and it comes in three variations: annual, seasonal, and monthly. At any duration, the pass allows you to take as many flights as you can arrange for 1 cent each – there’s no limit. The pass covers any route Frontier flies. But that “as many you can arrange” limitation cuts your flexibility considerably:

• You can make firm bookings only one day in advance for domestic travel or one week ahead for international destinations. “International” means mainly top tourist centers in Mexico and the Caribbean. In some cases, you can book earlier—of course, by paying an “early booking” fee.
• Pass seats are in a separate fare bucket, with extensive holiday blackout periods and seat limitations at all times. Frontier’s booking engine automatically displays available pass seats for each flight.
• The basic one-cent “fare” covers almost nothing else—except that if you get the Silver Elite option, you do get a standard advance seat assignment. You pay extra for a checked bag, a carry-on bag, in-flight meals, and just about anything else you can think of, plus “fees.” And pass travel doesn’t add any mileage to your account.

Reports in the blogosphere conclude that arranging a round-trip itinerary to optimize your time isn’t easy. You may find a good outgoing itinerary, but nothing comes up for your return. And even if you pack light, most trips wind up costing you far more than that base “fare.” Frontier’s “optional” extras cost a bundle: Either a checked bag or a carry-on costs from $30 to $55 if you buy ahead for $79 to $99 at the airport. As far as I can tell, baggage fees are dynamically priced, so they might be somewhat higher or lower for any given flight.

An equally important qualification is that this pass is a realistic option only if you live near an airport with good Frontier service. Its busiest hubs are Denver, Atlanta, and Orlando, but it offers a reasonably wide choice of destinations from Las Vegas, the Chicago area, and from several big fields in the Northeast. I live in the Pacific Northwest, on the other hand, where Frontier flights are limited to a few big airports and totally absent at my small home airport of Medford, Oregon. Still another problem is that unless you live in one of Frontier’s top hubs, itineraries on connecting flights might require an extended layover at one of those hubs.

Various airlines around the world have experimented with fly-all-you-want passes, but none has lasted more than a few years. The most recent examples have run for a while in South America and Asia, but I haven’t confirmed any at this time. Other airlines around the world occasionally hype what they call “passes,” but they are not fly all you want.

If the government allows the proposed JetBlue-Spirit merger, Frontier will become the country’s leading low-fare line. It has lots more Airbus-family planes on order and plans to add a lot more flights and destinations. I’ve never flown this generation of Frontier, but from what I gather its hard product is as bad as I’ve experienced on EasyJet and Ryanair—ultra-tight seats with minimal legroom. Its only premium offering is a few “Stretch” seats with 5 to 7 extra inches of legroom.

I’m not sure why other airlines don’t offer similar products. I assume that with careful allotment of seats to various fare buckets, an airline can almost guarantee that a passholder won’t displace a ticket-buying passenger. Meanwhile, if you have a sense of adventure, lots of free time, and live near a Frontier airport, think about the GoWild! pass. Check frontier.com.

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