Frontier really knows how to generate headlines and the GoWild! All You Can Fly Pass does get headlines. Paying one price and being able to fly as much as you want sounds amazing which is probably why it gets the headlines. News is all about clicks now so something like this certainly gets the clicks. However, this is more hype than reality. The amount of people that could really make use out of this pass is very limited.
What is it?
This is a pass sold by the discount airline Frontier. They claim that if you pay one price you can fly as much as you want within set dates. The pass comes with these “benefits”:
-An unlimited number of flights
-Access to Frontier’s domestic and international destinations
-Travel that will keep your miles from expiring
-Get confirmed bookings the day before flight departure for domestic travel and starting 10 days before flight departure for international travel
-Ability to use your Elite Status for FREE bags and seats.
Right now you can either buy a Summer Pass which is good from April 11, 2023 to September 30, 2023, a Winter Pass which is good from September 2, 2023 to February 29, 2024 or an Annual Pass which was good from April 11, 2023. The prices are $499, $299 and $1,999 respectively.
Sounds amazing to fly for once price all the time right? As Lee Corso would say, not so fast!
Not exactly free flights
For each flight, you’ll pay $0.01 in airfare plus applicable taxes, fees, and charges at the time of booking. Have you ever looked at some of these fees? They can make up half of your ticket price at some destinations. So those “free” flights are still going to cost you some money. You also have to pay for seat selection, bags, etc.
Fly all the time…..except on a ton of blackout dates
There’s a ton of black out dates. These include May 25, 26, 29; June 29, 30; July 1-5, 8, 9; August 31; September 1, 4; October 5, 6, 9; November 18, 22, 24-27; December 16, 17, 22-24, 26-31; 2024: January 1, 15; February 15, 16, 19; March 3, 10, 15-17, 22-24, 29-31; April 5-7, 12-14. Blackout dates for May 2024 are TBD. That’s a ton of dates!
You have to be very, very flexible
Domestic flights can only be booked the day before, international 10 days before. So that makes it very difficult for you to plan. You are going to be flying standby. So if you book a flight and get yourself to the airport, you have to wait to make sure that there are available seats. With most flights being full these days, especially in the summer, this can be a problem. What if you get to your destination and then can’t find a flight home? You might be stuck somewhere or you might be stuck paying a fortune to get home.
Some of you might be thinking that you could just book several flights and take the one that you can get on but no, it doesn’t work that way. You can only book one flight at a time. This prevents you from booking several flights and then taking the one that is available.
This is a sneaky subscription
Not really highlighted anywhere that I’ve seen is that this “pass” is actually a subscription that auto-renews. I wonder how many people know that. Somehow the news media hyping this must have forgotten to mention this. Not only does it renew, but it renews at a higher price. In fact, that price is likely going to be much higher. Of course you can cancel but you have to remember to do that.
Does this make sense for you? Probably not.
Perhaps one of you is saying: I am flying by myself, I don’t need to pay for bags, I’m very flexible, I live near a hub, I don’t care where I go, etc, etc. Perhaps it will make sense but you have to do the math. I think the problem is that too many people just think this sounds good and since it’s in limited supply, they rush to buy it instead of actually doing the math.
Out of all those things I listed, one of the most important is that you still have to pay taxes and fees. I picked a random flight from Denver to Atlanta in the summer. The roundtrip price was $300 and the taxes and fees were $91. If you were to successfully take this trip twice (assuming prices are the same) during the summer, you would have paid $418 ($209 each) for airfare before taxes and fees. If you bought the pass for $399, you’d be ahead by $19.
But of course, Frontier has some really cheap flights. Let’s say you wanted to go from Denver to Las Vegas. There are flights for $182. Of that, taxes and fees accounts for $83. Thus, the actual airfare is just $99. You’d have to take four roundtrips just to break even.
And again, this all assumes that you can actually get on the flights. What if there are some horrible summer storms that result in a meltdown for Frontier like we recently had with Southwest? You could be away from home trying to figure out how to get back. It won’t take much to result in days’ worth of flights with massive standby lists making is very difficult for you to get home at all, let alone use your pass. You’ll get bumped for paying passengers, so you’ll continue getting bumped to the end of the line.
If think this pass works for someone that either doesn’t work or can work remotely, has incredible flexibility, is open to exploring different places, lives near a Frontier hub or focus city, has the money to pay the fees for all of these flights and can fly without luggage. I think that’s a very small number of people.
As long as you run the numbers and you think it works for you, then go for it and have fun. My main issue is that people see these headlines and get caught up in all the hype that they miss all the details which probably explains why some people are so excited about this. Just be sure to cancel because it will renew at $999!