Frontier Makes a Play for Business Travel – Cranky Flier

It is not often that you would expect to hear the words “Frontier” and “Business Travel” in the same sentence, but the airline has made a small but useful move into that arena. In fact, what it’s doing for the business traveler is something that even leisure travelers can benefit from.

Frontier is an airline that I think most would agree is targeting the leisure traveler. I don’t say that because of the product, exactly. After all, it does have a useful elite frequent flier program that gives helpful freebies. It also has a decent onboard product with a lot of extra legroom seating. If you aren’t getting an upgrade on another airline, Frontier wouldn’t be a bad choice… if it flies when you need it to.

The big issue for Frontier is its schedule. It flies a lot of routes, and it doesn’t fly them very often.

After all, this is an airline that — according to Cirium data — has 361 routes currently filed in June and more than half of them fly less than daily. Fewer than 13 percent of routes have at least two daily flights. That’s not great for a business traveler’s schedule. Case in point… Delta has fewer than 5 percent of flights within North America and the Caribbean that operate less than daily while just shy of half of the airline’s routes have at least three daily flights.

All that being said, Frontier has planes that are going at certain times. And while I can’t imagine any business traveler (or person who is remotely sane) taking this flight no matter how cheap it is…

… there are plenty of flights that do operate during times when normal humans would get on airplanes. And if Frontier happens to have flights going when a business traveler needs to fly, it should be trying to get them onboard.

Frontier realizes this so it has created a simpler, more business-friendly fare that corporate travelers could actually book with ease. It calls this BizFares.

BizFares can only be booked through travel agents using global distribution systems (GDS) including Amadeus, Sabre, and Travelport. Why on earth would Frontier be encouraging the use of the GDS when nobody else is? It’s not. But it knows that many business travelers need to book via agencies who use a GDS, and so it figures it might as well put something useful and money-making in that system.

Frontier does sell tickets through the GDS today, but it only sells the base fare with no ancillaries, and it sells at a slight premium over its own website. For example, if I did hate myself and wanted to buy a ticket on that flight from LA to Dallas on May 18, the base fare is $138.98 when booked direct. In Sabre, it’s $143.98.

This is meant more for the traveler searching solely on price through Expedia or other online travel agents, but once it’s purchased, it requires going on and adding on extra directly with Frontier. If you’re a business traveler, you will absolutely need to buy ancillaries, so you’re going to have to now go to two places to make it happen, and corporate travel policies don’t always make that easy to do. For that reason (and others, like reliability issues), I’ve found that most corporate agencies just tend to ignore Frontier as a viable option and don’t even think about the pricing if it shows up in the GDS.

Knowing this, Frontier figured it might as well create a bundled fare that it can sell in the GDS for the corporate traveler who then won’t need to worry about ancillaries. BizFares come with a lot of stuff:

This was constructed well. It doesn’t include a checked bag, because business travelers don’t often need that. (If they do, they can add it on after the fact, but it’s probably not going to price well enough to do it that way.) It includes the extra legroom seating (which is apparently no longer called Stretch but rather “Premium”) and it comes with early boarding. There are no change fees, and it allows for free same day confirmed or standby. Plus, you earn extra miles.

The closest I can get to this on Frontier’s own website is to buy the $138.98 base fare, add on what is now generically called “Bundle 1” with standard seating for $110 — what happend to The Works and The Perks? so boring now… — and then pay the $9 upcharge to get extra legroom seating. All-in, I’m looking at $257.98.

When I flip over to the GDS and look at BizFares, it’s a better deal. The way Frontier does this is it reserves two fare classes for BizFares, C and J. Those are the classes usually reserved for business class on other airlines, so… why not?

The C fare is low and the J fare is high. In this case, the C fare is just $223.96, saving over $30 versus booking direct AND it includes the ability to make free changes on the day of travel, something Bundle 1 does not include. While that may not be helpful in the vast majority of Frontier’s markets, there are some where it could come in handy. But it’s still $30 cheaper so it’s a good way to go all around.

If the C fare isn’t available, well, the J fare is rarely going to make sense. It is $433.96 in this market. There aren’t many times when that is going to be worth buying, but maybe if only the full coach fare is available otherwise, this could work out. That seems more like a fishing expedition where if you catch one fish, it’s worth dropping the line into the water.

Frontier is really trying to keep people on their toes with this product, however, by pricing it in strange ways. There doesn’t really seem to be any true template being followed. I went and pulled a variety of markets on a variety of dates, and the results were all over the map:

Frontier BizFares Comparison

For some reason, the Philly – Vegas market didn’t have a J fare, only C. And Phoenix – Vegas was a last minute search so C was not available.

In most markets, the BizFare option was cheaper than doing the bundle direct with Frontier. Dallas/Fort Worth – San Juan was an exception, as was Trenton – Orlando. In other markets, the difference was miniscule. In Phoenix to Cincinnati, for example, the BizFare was $3.02 cheaper. Elsewhere, the difference was huge, like in Cleveland – Punta Cana where the BizFare saved $81.

I should note, I also looked at building this directly with Frontier without a bundle and instead piecing everything together, and it was much more expensive that way across the board. The only time that makes sense is if someone doesn’t need a carry-on or care about an advance seat assignment. But even then a comparison is required.

In the end, I think what Frontier is doing here is wise. It knows there are business travelers that would fly the airline if it was easy enough. So, Frontier set aside two fare classes and just made those include all the things that a business traveler would need… and a little more.

The “more” part is probably key here, because it allows Frontier to talk up what a deal it is to buy this without having to acknowledge that you might not need everything in the bundle.

It’s still not seamless. Once this is booked, a traveler then has to go on to the Frontier website to choose a seat. But with no payment required, it takes away a huge piece of the friction that prevents business travelers from doing this today. It was quick and easy to implement something like this, and clearly the airline just wanted something in the market quickly. After all, it has had quite a revenue problem, and it needs to get that juiced.

I waited a bit after the initial rollout to see if there were promotional fares in the market that would get out, but I still do not understand the pricing at all. Its possible the airline is just trying a lot of things and seeing what sticks. Undoubtedly fares will change, and I would still recommend always comparing booking direct and booking the BizFare, but it’s a welcome addition to the market that should pay at least some dividends for Frontier.

And Frontier isn’t done. It also announced it will block middle seats in the first two rows, creating a European-style business class for those who want the room. It costs nothing to create that product, just the potential of losing 4 seats of revenue. But if Frontier is successful at attracting more business travelers, this will easily pay for itself.

Now Frontier just needs to get its operation in better shape. Once it does that, it becomes a truly viable option.