Frontier Made Its Top Tier Easier and Everything Else Harder

Frontier Airlines rewrote its loyalty programme on 1 September, and the two halves of the change point in opposite directions. The headline the airline led with is genuinely good news for its heaviest flyers: the Elite Diamond qualification threshold drops by a quarter, from 100,000 Elite Status Points to 75,000. Members who reach 75,000 points during 2026 will hold Diamond for the 2027 calendar year. It is a rare move in an industry that has spent three years making top tiers harder to reach, and Frontier is right to point at it.

The other half is the part that affects far more people. Starting with purchases made on 1 September, mileage earning and status credits on the airline’s cheapest basic fares fall by as much as 90 percent. The reduction lands hardest on members who do not carry the Frontier Airlines World Mastercard, whose earning rates drop sharply across every status level on those tickets. Under the new structure, a general member earns 1x on a basic fare, with Silver at 3x, Gold at 5x, Platinum at 7x and Diamond at 11x. Cardholders earn more when they buy an economy, premium or business bundle.

Read together, the two changes describe a single strategy rather than a contradiction. Frontier is not trying to have fewer elite members at the top; it is trying to stop giving away status and miles to people buying the lowest fare it sells. The lower Diamond bar rewards customers who spend on bundles and the co-brand card, while the earning cuts quietly remove the path that ran through cheap tickets alone. That is the revenue-based logic the large US carriers adopted years ago, arriving now at an ultra-low-cost airline where the base fare is the entire product.

There is a second deadline worth diarising. From 1 January 2027, elite members buying the cheapest basic fare will no longer receive complimentary seat selection, and their change and cancellation fee waivers disappear. Complimentary UpFront Plus seating and the forthcoming first class upgrades will both require purchasing a bundle. For anyone holding Frontier status and buying basic fares out of habit, the arithmetic of what that status is actually worth changes twice: once in the earning rate now, and again in the benefits in January.

Sources: View from the Wing, Frontier Airlines