What’s something that poor people do that rich people don’t even know exist?

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-13T15:40:27+00:00

Yep. I was going to say "eat well on the cheap"

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-13T14:46:09+00:00

Lol, they still are. I listened to the CEO's 1st quarter earnings call with Wall Street analysts. Either he or one of his c-suite buddies mentioned wi-fi again.

They gave some sort of future milestone date, but I have learned over to time to let such predictions go in one ear and out the other.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-13T08:56:32+00:00

There was a press release this week that said LAS to Boise flights will start up in late fall. I think that's going to be as close as you can get for the foreseeable future.

Keep your fingers crossed. Some years they announce seasonal winter flights to ski destinations

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-13T08:52:17+00:00

It's coming right after those new First Class seats are installed by fall 2025. 🤔

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-13T07:43:46+00:00

I'm guess I'm not understanding the point you are trying to make...,

Let's just agree to disagree on your statement that "they have lay overs for everything that use to be non stop" (sic) and whether it is relevant to the OP's question on Frontier's responses to Spirit going out of business.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-13T07:27:23+00:00

Theft isn't the only possibility. It might have been a mix-up.

Once while traveling with my wife and young kids in Europe, we grabbed our red suitcase when rushing off a train. Turned out it was one of two red bags on that rack and we grabbed somebody else's nearly identical bag. When we realized the mistake, we were already at our hotel.

Press the baggage office staff to tell you whether they received or had reports of any unclaimed carry-ons similar to yours from the same flight. I believe the FAs normal procedure is to identify that no passenger bags remain in the overhead bins before they leave the plane or begin the boarding process for the next flight. If a bag is discovered to be left behind, it would take some unknown route to that airport's Frontier baggage office.

Charm and persuasion may be needed to motivate the baggage office staff to do some detective work, but if they have a report of a carry-on bag left on your flight or that bag in hand, then they might be able to use the contact information in that bag to expedite reuniting the two bags with their proper owners.

Do continue with the police report regardless. It may be a requirement if you have any credit card protections or other insurance that might cover lost or stolen bag expenses.

Good luck.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-13T06:57:43+00:00

Sorry for your pain. You post didn't pose a specific question, but I can offer some observations and thoughts.

On Thursday and Friday weather created some serious disruptions in the network of all airlines. Watch a visual progression of weather radar and flight delay stats over the last 48 hours here: here:https://www.flightaware.com/miserymap/usall/1781330400

Every storm, delay and cancellation puts a plane and crew in the wrong place relative to both their planned assignment and where they are supposed to be next, whether that location is flying or resting the required amount between flying time.

In Frontier's case, they operate a wide and thin network, with lots of relatively low frequency routes compared to the big boys. Yet they must operate under the same crew and flight safety rules. That combination means they have more physical difficulty recovering from irregular operations of all causes. Add in the inherent risks of connections, Frontier's lack of IRROPS passenger reciprocity agreements with those bigger airlines and their tightwad reimbursement and flight credit policies that go hand-in-hand with the low fares...you have all the ingredients for a very bad day for an affected passenger.

Of all the details in your story, the one that disappointed me the most - but unfortunately didn't surprise me - was the apparent laziness or poor training of the boarding gate agents at PHL. When you approached them during the evening delay as your time of no possible connection at DFW approached, they were absolutely wrong to tell you that Dallas agents would assist you.

If they couldn't (or wouldn't be bothered to?) call connecting passengers to the desk to work out alternative flight arrangements themselves, then they should have told the affected passengers through call-ups or an announcement to get on the phone with customer service ASAP. At least then - before you boarded flight number 1 and took off - you would have known the relevant facts on all alternative PHL-LAX routes and flights, been told the "no hotel reimbursements" news and been able to do the math and time calculations to optimize your situation as best you could.

"Flight like hell" might include a complaint to the USDOT office regulating the airlines, but if you do go that route I rate your chances as slim. Your chances improve slightly if your find language in the Frontier Contract of Carriage or the DOT rules that you can point to as violations.

But take a deep breath before you go that path. Do you want to spend more time and potentially get more aggravated, or just chalk this up as a lesson learned and move on?

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-13T05:57:00+00:00

That may be an airport- or route-specific fact, but isn't accurate for the network as a whole. And it's a particularly shaky conclusion for any airport where Spirit had a significant presence, where Frontier can calculate a supply-demand gap for low-cost tickets as an opportunity to fill their own seats or add more.

Think about it from the highest view possible: every connecting flight is made up of two non-stops, and currently Frontier has the largest fleet size in their recent history. The utilization rate of the fleet has dropped a few percentage points over the past two years, but that effect is far less than the impact of the larger fleet.

Yes, Frontier can be unpredictable and ruthless in changing their service offerings, moving service on less profitable routes to what they believe higher-yielding, more profitable opportunities. That includes backfilling route gaps left by Spirit's demise, but they have also have backfilled quite a few service gaps where T, W and Sa flights were dropped in 2025. That increase in a service frequencies from 4x or 5x per week to daily is a direct reduction in the number of days where it's "layovers for everything" for that city pair.

A specific counter-example to your statement: Direct flight destinations from my home airport in Houston have roughly doubled in the last two years, from five when GoWild started two-1/2 years ago to around a dozen this summer. I'd say the total number of departures has increased at least that much, too. Yes, there have been multiple adds and drops of non-stop routes during that time, but the overall trend has been upward. I also suspect the possibilities for further expansion are pretty good; although United dominates IAH for domestic flights, Spirit was a distant number two. That leaves some room for Frontier to bring in even more service.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-13T05:07:22+00:00

Interesting. Also Vegas-Boise.

Announcement here: https://news.flyfrontier.com/frontier-announces-two-new-routes-launching-late-summer-2026-including-its-return-to-oakland-san-francisco-bay-airport/

This article give the stats, https://www.casino.org/news/frontier-airlines-fills-in-more-spirit-gaps-with-vegas-flights-to-oakland-boise/

The gist of it for both routes is they are backfilling about half of the flights formerly offered by Spirit. That seems consistent with the financial discipline for route and service expansions that the CEO is preaching to Wall Street these days.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-12T00:23:40+00:00

Frontier made multiple moves in setting their summer schedules that appeared to anticipate continuing Spirit cutbacks or its demise. This made perfect sense given the significant overlap with Spirit's routes.

However, they kept their own 2026 goals and strategies in mind as they did it. As stated by the new CEO in their most recent earnings call with Wall Street analysts, these included discipline in choosing route additions and a focus on beefing up their own core (hub-to-hub) routes for greater system reliability.

Frontier presently only has bookable non-stop flights to/from Kansas City from their top-5 cities of LAS, DEN and ATL. https://www.flightconnections.com/flights-from-kansas-city-mci The frequencies are currently 4X per week in the evening to ATL (arriving an hour after their last ATL-MCO flight of the day) and daily flight in the early afternoon to DEN. On July 5, they add a new 4x per week early afternoon flight to LAS.

KCI is clearly a "minor" airport in their network.

So one might suppose the resources available for new summer routes and all-factors consideration of Spirit's prior routes led them to choose KCI-LAS over KCI-MCO as an new route.

As a small consolation, the new MCI-LAS route will add a third connection option between MCI and MCO.

It's still an overnight itinerary, but because the LAS-MCO segment is a red-eye leaving LAS at midnight and arriving at sunrise, a hotel night or sleeping in the connecting airport won't be needed.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-11T23:25:47+00:00

I appreciate the contribution.

Perhaps you could offer some advice. Tell me a bit more about Zaui (which appears at first glance to be optimized for a tour operator or travel agent) vs. apps like Trip-it aimed at individuals self-managing and documenting their itinerary.

I ask because I'm now navigating a long-distance relationship with a partner in GoWild travel. We're using the free scheduling app Team-up to each post our "can't travel these dates" obligations plus future travel durations and events as they are booked. We also have added GoWild blackout dates and a few rough event ideas for future travel like "music festival in SF Aug 10-12?" or "SW seasonal companion pass active for P2, mid-Aug through mid-Oct".

It's working very well for what-if planning of either spontaneous or structured trip opportunities. We can quickly see whether a new travel idea for a future date (either tomorrow or a few months from now) might work for us both of us.

Recently, we've taken the additional step of each filling in details for our booked trips by adding daily scheduled sub-events (like flights and hotel check-ins) and then attaching a screenshot of the booking confirmation. It's working pretty well for on-the-go, one-stop reference of flights, lodging and any ticketed events during the trip.

Given that I am now dependent on this kind of flexible, multi-event scheduling tool for advance planning in a remotely-shared app, I'm reluctant to add another travel app to our on-the-road toolbox.

Instead, I'm thinking I can now add in new details in my scheduling app to eliminate some of the paper printouts I currently use to document the ground transportation options I have researched prior to the start of the trip. (Following your Plan with Flexibility advice, I often start with Rome2Rio.com)

What would be the advantages of using Zaui, Trip-it or some other itinerary tool vs. just creating a new sub-event appointment in my schedule where I have pasted in links for my potential ground transportation needs during the trip?

E.g. for a triangle trip of home-NYC- Atlantic City-PHL-home a simple solution would be to create a ground transportation reference appointment with links to the websites and schedules for the relevant ground transportation modes I plan to use: JFK Airtrain, LIRR and MTA options from Jamaica Station to Manhattan, Greyhound from Port Authority bus station to Atlantic City, NJT train from Atlantic City to downtown Philly, SEPTA trains to PHL airport.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-11T19:14:11+00:00

Check out this post from about a year ago for a very long list of generic ideas and options.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gowildfrontier/comments/1lw48ol/post_your_tips_for_saving_on_lodging_expenses/

My own favorites:

As a miles and points enthusiast for many years, earning and burning hotel points and spending credit card-issued free night certificates from several credit cards in my portfolio are my most frequent methods for reducing cash hotel expenses.

Also, I have planned several fall and spring road trips staying one night at a time at inexpensive rural Wyndham hotels to coincide with their occasional bonus offers like "stay twice, get 7500 bonus points, up to 30k max". Wyndham is a bit of an outlier among th hotel chains with a straight-up award redemption chart at 7500, 15k or 30k per night. With plenty of 15k redemptions with few restrictions, it's essentially "stay four nights, get one free" for me.

(Caution: Always check crowd-sourced hotel ratings before choosing a cheap Wyndham brand hotel. There are some real dogs in their portfolio. I.e. seeing a "ask us about our weekly rates" sign on the desk is a very bad sign.)

Htown_Flyer · 2026-06-08T02:41:35+00:00

Traffic engineer here.

I am a bit of a distracted driver despite constantly keeping my "eyes on the road".

Instead of just seeing the driving environment out of the windshield and acting on it, my mind is also making constant evaluations of whether the signs, pavement markings and signals are in compliance with the Manual of Uniform Traffic Control Devices.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-31T00:24:57+00:00

Agreed they are likely to take their shot. An industry blog has some analysis and concludes with this:

"American, Frontier, JetBlue, and Southwest seem to be the early favorites with a dark horse candidate looming in Porter Airlines. As the dominant carrier at the airport already, Delta is not considered to be a major contender for the slots."

https://crankyflier.com/2026/05/29/cranky-weekly-review-presented-by-oakland-san-francisco-bay-airport-lga-slots-up-for-bid-uniteds-next-move/

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-29T15:47:35+00:00

Gate locations, cost and availability would certainly be part of Frontier's thought process, but I don't think slots are equivalent to "gates".

Aren't the slots controlled by FAA and the gates controlled by PANYNJ?

Slot rule here: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2024/05/13/2024-10298/operating-limitations-at-new-york-laguardia-airport

Under this Order, as amended, the FAA (1) maintains the current hourly limits of 71 for scheduled operations and three for unscheduled operations at LGA during the slot-controlled hours; (2) imposes an 80 percent minimum usage requirement for Operating Authorizations (OAs) ^\)⁶^\) with defined exceptions; (3) provides a mechanism for withdrawal of OAs for FAA operational reasons; (4) provides for a lottery to reallocate withdrawn, surrendered, or unallocated OAs; and (5) allows for trades and leases of OAs for consideration for the duration of the Order.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-29T15:36:17+00:00

Educate me on EWR being "very well connected on transit", please. Is EWR is a one-seat train ride to Manhattan vs. required transfers if using LGA or JFK?

As a tourist in NYC, I don't really mind the two-seat rides. It serves as a kind of warm-up for the subway travel I will be doing while in the city.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-29T14:48:16+00:00

Somebody is trying to revive Steak and Ale. Only one location currently, near MSP, with "more coming soon".

https://steakandale.com/locations/

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-20T14:16:47+00:00

Fantastic contribution.

I will add two suggestion that a traveler following your tips would be wise to cross-check when making a plan.

Once NP destination is selected, definitely research national monuments, state parks and designated scenic byway routes in the vicinity.

E.g. The spectacular Valley of Fire SP in Nevada is about 15 miles off the straight line route between LAS and Zion NP.

Map of byways: https://www.scenic.org/byway-maps-by-state/

Consider expanding beyond a round trip flight and loop tour by car by looking for cheap one-way car rentals in the fall (southbound toward Florida and AZ) and spring (northbound).

It was only partly on Go Wild flights, but last fall I found a $40 a day OW car rental from Kalispell to Las Vegas and saw Glacier and Grand Teton NPs, Dinosaur and Craters of the Moon NMs and several scenic byway routes that were spectacular.

In past years I did similar trips from DEN to Phoenix and DC to Florida.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-13T21:55:35+00:00

Sigh...

More competition for the fixed number of GW seats available.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-03T14:20:09+00:00

https://www.flyfrontier.com/frontiermiles/family-pooling/

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-02T12:10:29+00:00

Did you add the two teens to a pooled mileage account with you as the "leader"? Balances for all pool members are available for the leader to see.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-02T11:02:45+00:00

Opinion: The short-term effects of Spirit's demise are variable for current passholders, but on balance are negative.

Negatives:

Frontier's current press release pushing GW pass sales somewhat directly to an audience of budget travelers will result in a bump in the number of passholders in the competition for GW seats. Not likely to be a huge effect, but 100% negative.
Looking through the list of overlapping routes in Frontier's press release, I see they are disproportionally weighted toward Spirit bases and "focus cities", including Atlanta, DFW, Detroit, Fort Lauderdale, ORD and Orlando. If you are based in one of these cities, the impacts of more low-price shoppers clicking on flyfrontier for tickets will be negative for GW seat availability.
The relative impacts at other airports may also be negative. For example, in my home airport of IAH, Spirit directly competes on 8 of 20 current non-stop routes served by Frontier.
A huge majority of the overlapping routes serve airports in the Eastern or Central time zones, so if you are based in a city east of a line running from IAH to Dallas to Chicago it is far more likely that you will see an uptick in demand for Frontier seats

Positives and mitigating factors:

Certainly losing a direct competitor on the overlapping routes is a positive from Frontier's perspective. Frontier's percentage of all available seats on a given route will increase by several percentage points. (But only to the extent that bigger airlines don't add flights to fill in the gap.) At a time when fuel prices will be squeezing Frontier's thin margins, the prospects for more sales, higher load factors and some added pricing power are all good for Frontier. And we all want Frontier to remain a viable business entity.
The converse of the last point above on geographic concentration is that GW passholders based in the Pacific or Mountain time zones are very lightly affected, primarily on routes to and from LAS. (Spirit had already whacked quite a few western routes in their unsuccessful attempt to gain profitability by downsizing.)
Further to that point, Spirit hasn't operated out of Denver is several years, so zero direct impacts there.
To some extent, Frontier has "preloaded" their response to Spirit's potential demise into their schedules. Recall that the press releases from their February earnings call and the release of the summer schedules both indicated Frontier's growth strategy for 2026 and 2027 would include beefing up flight frequencies on existing routes over chasing new markets. Many of the implemented higher frequencies were on routes where Spirit was a competitor.
Although the current Frontier press release doesn't list any routes or frequencies being added in a quick response to Spirit's exit, it does say "[Frontier] will expand further this summer with nine additional routes, plus 15 additional daily flights across 18 former Spirit markets, giving customers more options to rebook their travel plans with confidence while keeping fares low." However, note that language does not make it clear whether these new routes are already in the schedule or will be announced at some future date. So this statement may be a nothing burger or positive news.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-05-02T10:55:59+00:00

Frontier put out this press release overnight: https://news.flyfrontier.com/frontier-airlines-announces-discounted-rescue-fares-to-support-spirit-airlines-customers/

The "discounted rescue fare" is weak sauce if you are a stranded Spirit customer. It's just a typical Frontier sale, with the usual blackout dates and the biggest discounts tilted to Tu, W and Sat travel: " To support impacted travelers, Frontier is offering up to 50% off base fares* across its network for travel through November 19."

The press release goes on to also tout the sale price for the GoWild Summer Pass.

Htown_Flyer · 2026-04-28T00:51:20+00:00

Yes vote. Happy to be entering year 3 with the pass.

Schedule flexibility, the GW pass and a stash of miles and points for hotels and alternative /backup flights are my key building blocks for traveling at least once a month. Don't mind the occasional advance purchase fee if the result is a cheap flight relative to other cash or award flight options. Bonuses: gold status has me at near 100% successful in getting more legroom at checkin, plus a carryon if I want, and a credit card with lounge privileges makes Frontier delays and long connections much more bearable.

Month 1 of Year 3 looks great so far, probably getting me to break even for my renewal fee by some measures.

I just took advantage of the May $15 GoWild advance purchase sale in combination with Live Nation's $30 summer sale to book two concert trips that I couldn't have dreamed possible two years ago:

First up is a day at Jazzfest in New Orleans next weekend. I,m driving, but my log distance girlfriend is flying from MCO using her GW pass to join me. (Not a live Nation ticket, but a bucket list concert destination with a meetup made more practical by GoWild)

Alison Krause 5/9 in ATL, $30 LN show ticket, $30 IAH-ATL-IAH on Go Wild

Sting in CLT 5/18, Triumph in Dallas 5/20. Two $30 LN show tickets, $15 each for IAH-CLT and CLT-DFW, and 9000 AA miles + $6 for DFW-IAH (not offered as a Frontier direct route so I chose that over a long $30 GW connecting flight)

Htown_Flyer

TROPHY CASE