Thanks, Frontier

It’s very rare that I have anything nice to say about an airline, but I did want to be sure to publically thank Denver based Frontier for a call I made to them last week. Over the years I’ve been travelling, I’ve had probably dozens of occasions to spend time with various customer service representatives, but none has been quite as helpful as the Frontier rep – Bob – I spoke with last Thursday.

I’d called because I’d passed the barrier for their initial status level – to my way of thinking – better than a month ago. Unlike many larger airlines – hello American and United – Frontier offers its flyers status with a mere 15K miles travelled. Given my schedule of late, that didn’t take all that long. Less than a dozen trips to CA and back and I was there. Granted the benefits are minimal, but when you’re travelling on a full flight with a full sized carry-on, boarding first becomes a lot more important.

Anyway, despite my apparent achievement of said status, I hadn’t heard anything from Frontier about it. So I finally remembered to call Frontier before flying to Texas this past weekend for a personal trip. Bob was very helpful, and took a quick look at my account only to inform me that like most frequent flyer programs, Frontier measured their travelers by calendar year, and a full 11k of my miles came before January.

With most airlines, the call ends right there; you say something like, oh, I should have realized that, and they say, I’m sorry, is there anything else I can help you with today? This call was headed in that direction when I did my part, but Bob surprised me by saying – completely unsolicited, “In looking over your account, it’s clear that you’ve been a very loyal customer – let me see if there’s anything I can do for you. Would you mind holding?” Expecting very little, I said sure, I could hold. Less than a minute later, Bob was back on the line informing me that he’d spoken with his supervisor and he was happy to tell me that they’d gone ahead and granted me Ascent status despite the fact that I technically didn’t qualify (though give me a month or two, and I would have).

From their perspective, this is a small thing – trivial, really. And it’s not as if it’s that big a deal from mine. But irrespective of the actual significance of the benefits, it’s nice to know that Frontier’s got humans working for them – humans who can look at how much I’ve flown over a short span of time and grant me a small favor to make future travel slightly less difficult. As Dillon’s character says in Crash, it’s just a flick of their pen; but it’s a flick of their pen that will probably save me from having to check luggage on a full flight.

So thank you Frontier – and Bob – you’ve just made one of your better (if reluctant) customers a happy camper.