Update: This offer is longer available, please check the official website to see the current offer.
The Frontier Airlines World MasterCard is offering a bonus up to 50,000 miles after spending $500 within 90 days (~ 3 months) and making a balance transfer. Technically I would consider this bonus to be worth 40,000 miles since 10,000 of the bonus miles are earned from a balance transfer.
Frontier Airlines Credit Card Review
After being approved for the Barclays Frontier Airlines credit card you get 40,000 Frontier Airlines miles as a welcome bonus by spending $500 within the first 3 months. You can earn another 10,000 points after making a balance transfer in the first 90 days.
Since it is never a good deal to carry a balance on your credit cards, I would never recommend earning more points on a balance transfer. But earning 40,000 miles is still worth 2 free round trip flights in the US.
A $500 minimum spend is a low minimum spend for 40,000 miles and you can easily reach it with everyday spending or using Amazon Payments in one month.
The card has a $69 annual fee and also a 3% foreign transaction fee, so this is not the card you will want to use on international trips.
You can book a round trip economy award anywhere in the US including Alaska on Frontier Airlines for only 20,000 miles. This is compared to 25,000 miles on other major US airlines.
To fly round trip to Mexico, Jamaica, Costa Rica and the Dominican Republic it only costs 30,000 miles.
Here you can learn more about Frontier Airlines’ award chart and a route map to which Frontier Airlines flies.
Earn Double Miles on Frontier Airlines
You can 2x miles on purchases with Frontier Airlines and 1x miles on everything else.
Round Trip Domestic Flights for 20,000 Miles
One amazing benefit of using Frontier miles is that you can book a domestic flight for only 20,000 miles and $5.00 in taxes and fees! You can fly round trip to Mexico or Central America for only 30,000 miles.
You can also travel to Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and Jamaica on Frontier Airlines. You can fly to any of these international destinations for only 30,000 miles based on Frontier’s award charts. Most taxes and fees on international awards range from $46 – $106 per round trip.
There are three different award redemption levels:
- Standard Award tickets receive the benefits of the Economy Fare Option.
- CHOICE Award tickets receive the benefits of the Classic Fare Option on the day of travel.
- Last Seat Availability Award tickets receive the benefits of the Classic Plus Fare Option on the day of travel. These awards are exclusively available to Ascent and Summit level EarlyReturns members.
Standard Award tickets are the cheapest award options and offer a great value for using Frontier miles. You can book any seat available on a Frontier flight with the Last Seat Availability Award chart, but it will cost more than double (45,000 miles) the price of the Standard Award.
Companion Tickets for 5,000 Fewer Miles
You can book a companion award ticket for 5,000 fewer miles on a paid Frontier Airlines ticket. This means that you can purchase a flight on Frontier and have a companion fly for only 15,000 miles (compared to the normal 20,000 miles) round trip within the US.
Unlike Southwest’s Companion Pass, the seat availability are capacity controlled with the Frontier companion award ticket. You also have to pay the taxes and fees on the ticket which are ~$5.00 on round trips within the US. This is certainly not a huge perk compared to the Southwest Companion Pass, but may be useful if you often fly with a partner.
I can’t confirm from personal experience, but there is talk about being able to book one-way Companion Tickets for 5,000 miles cheaper. The terms on the credit card landing page do not state that the award must be booked as a round trip to get the 5,000 discount.
If this is true you could book 2 one-ways for 10,000 miles, which would be an amazing deal. Let me know in the comments if you have had success doing this!
Change and Cancellation Fees
You can change your award ticket for free if it is more than 8 days before your flights. This is a very generous rule compared to most other major US carriers that charge a ~$100 change fee within 21 days of the flight.
If you decide to change an award ticket within 7 days of the flight, you will have to pay $50, which is very reasonable compared to other airlines.
There is a $75 redeposit fee if you cancel an award, but this fee is waived for Last Seat Availability awards and Summit members.
You can read more about Frontiers change and baggage fees here.
How to Book Frontier Airlines Awards
You can redeem your Frontier EarlyReturns miles for award flights by two different ways:
Call Frontier Reservations at 800-432-1FLY (1359) to make your reservation with a reservation agent.
Booking award flights online is very easy, but if you decide to call in, you will have to pay a $10 Reservation Service Fee for Standard Award redemption.
The Bottom Line
The 50,000 miles Frontier Airlines World MasterCard welcome bonus is a great deal for domestic award flights and also travel to Mexico, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, and Jamaica.
The welcome bonus is essentially worth 40,000 miles after spending $500 in the first 90 days because the additional 10,000 miles requires a balance transfer.
You could get 2 free roundtrip flights within the US from the 40,000 mile bonus or a roundtrip flight to Mexico or Central American.
This could be a great card for you if you plan on flying domestically or to any of Frontiers international destinations, but I wouldn’t plan on putting a ton of spending on it after earning the welcome bonus.
Application link: Frontier Airlines World MasterCard
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If you already have an Early Returns account, do you know if the miles transfer over automatically??
Yes, just enter you Early Returns number when you apply and you’re all set!
Wanted to share my story on this. The bank who issues the cc “is provided with” or “creates” (depends on which entity to talk to) a default Early Returns account when you qualify for their Frontier credit card. It is different from your any E.R. account that you have created personally. The bank sends your miles to this account if you don’t take action to link YOUR OWN account to your credit card.
the news is Frontier is being bought and sold to new owner, I wonder if its going to change the benefits of this card ?
Yeah it will be interesting to see how things unfold with the new owners. I doubt the benefits of the card will change anytime soon, but there is a possibility that there are new airline fees with the ultra low cost carrier structure they are going with. They are not bad now, but things could change.