by Frontier Airlines has announced an all-you-can-fly “GoWild” deal for the upcoming travel year 2023-2024 – but is it a good deal?
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Border GoWild! All-You-Can Fly Pass
Frontier Airlines has launched its GoWild! all-you-can-fly pass that allows buyers to fly whatever they want on Frontier, but with some serious limitations. For a base price of $799 (they sold out the $599 introductory price), you get the following from Frontier:
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“An unlimited number of flights
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Flights are available 300+ days a year
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Access Frontier’s domestic and international destinations
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Trips where your Miles do not expire
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One low annual price for pass access up to 12 months of travel
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Receive confirmed bookings the day before flight departure for domestic travel and from 10 days before flight departure for international travel”
To get into the details, here are all the restrictions of the pass:
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“Flights can be booked and flown from May 2, 2023
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Flights can be booked and confirmed the day before flight departure for domestic travel and from 10 days before departure for international travel
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Flights must be booked on flyfrontier.com
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Flights are subject to blackout periods:
- 2023: May 25, 26, 29; June 29, 30; July 1-5, 8, 9; August 31th; September 1, 4; October 5, 6, 9; November 18, 22, 24-27; December 16, 17, December 22-24, December 26-31;
- 2024: January 1, 15; February 15, 16, 19; March 3, 10, March 15-17, March 22-24, March 29-31; April 5-7, 12-14. Blackout dates for May 2024 and beyond will be posted before accepting registrations for pass periods falling on those dates.
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Flights do not include additional products (such as bags or seats), you can still customize your trip
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Taxes, fees and charges apply at time of booking
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A rate of $0.01 is charged for each segment booked
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Flights and seats are subject to availability; availability of the last seat is not guaranteed
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Trips are not eligible to earn miles or status
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Traveling qualifies as an activity and extends your BORDER Miles expiration date
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The GoWild! Pass is not transferable. The pass holder is the only passenger allowed to travel with GoWild! Pass privileges.
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Your Pass will automatically renew for consecutive one-year terms unless you cancel
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You must be 18 years or older and a resident of the United States to enter the GoWild! Pass”
For review, you cannot use the pass until May 2, 2023 and there are 52 days in the period that are not eligible. Domestic travel is only possible one day before departure, international travel only possible 10 days in advance. Flights still cost a minimum of $20.21 each way before taxes and 1¢ fares that include a carrier interface fee that starts at about $14.60 per person per flight (because flights must be booked with FrontierAirlines.com and not at the airport .) Although they have a seat available, it may not be open for GoWild! pass holders. Travel qualifies as an activity, but flyers do not earn miles or elite status with the pass and flights. It is only bookable for the pass holder, extras such as checked baggage or seat selection are still extra, it is only available for adults in the US and if not canceled it will automatically renew for $1,999.
Practical value
The value of an unlimited flight pass may seem like a good value, but is it? For Denver, Orlando, or maybe Philadelphia or Atlanta flyers, this might be a good idea simply because it only takes one or two trips on the GoWild! pass to make sense. But let’s look further.
We covered some size secondary airports last week for another purpose where Frontier would struggle to prove value with this offering. Even looking at tougher markets like New York, flyers should no doubt hook up in Orlando and Denver also to reach destinations beyond the East Coast. The country’s fourth-largest market, Houston, serves just four destinations between two airports. Dallas has (11) including Cancun, but any other destination requires a transfer. If we look at the Los Angeles metro and even throw in San Diego, that’s just a handful of unconnected destinations.
But many flyers connect every day to reach their destination, why is that a problem? It’s only a big deal because of Frontier’s concentration in Denver. My home airports are Pittsburgh and Fort Myers, Florida. I have a choice of six destinations if I don’t have a connection in Denver. However, connecting in Denver and opening up the network requires a cross-country flight and sometimes lengthy connections. Most searches resulted in day trips with the possibility of overnight stays or red eye to reach most destinations. Obviously, a connection from Pittsburgh to Los Angeles via Denver makes sense and makes sense, but if you cross Denver from Pittsburgh to New Orleans, Dallas, or Chicago, the value starts to diminish quickly.
These are one-way flights, so the return is not guaranteed, meaning you may not know when you will be able to get back home. That’s a big deal for most travelers and an unintended consequence of the deal, even though the restriction is in plain English, black and white on the website.
Frontier also does not fly to and from all the destinations they list. This may mean that flights departing on Tuesday will not return for a few days, again, subject to availability and the availability of the last seat will not be considered. Some destinations are Saturday only, meaning visitors will have to wait an entire week if they can’t make that return flight.
For retirees, with homes in a market where Frontier serves both non-stop, this can be a great value.
Conclusion
At the $599 introductory level, I could see the GoWild! useful to pass on to a wider audience, but at $799 with the limitations, the blackout dates, the connectivity issues, it seems less valuable to me. Many readers have reached out asking if this is a good deal, and for our Denver flyers, I’d recommend it. But its impracticability outside Frontier immediate cities makes it difficult for most consumers.
What do you think? Have you considered/have a GoWild! pass from Frontier Airlines? How are you going to use it?
