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For $39 Frontier will guarantee you an
empty middle seat
The middle seat debate continues with Frontier monetizing, rather than blocking, the middle seat. Between May 8th and August 31st, Frontier will offer 18 “More Room” seats up for purchase for $39. This guarantees that no one will sit in the middle seat in your row. We’ve seen other airlines, like American, outright block the sale of middle seat on flights leaving a third of all revenue off the table. Matthew from Live and Let’s Fly had a great opinion piece on the role of middle seats going forward, and personally, I agree with him – it’s impossible to socially distance on a plane so buyer beware.
It’s unsurprising that Frontier, which monetizes nearly every aspect of flying aside from cabin pressurization, bathrooms, and seatbelts, would go this route, and honestly who can blame them…but here’s the thing:
Are Frontier flights, between now and the end of August, going to be so packed that you’ll even need to do this, and will Frontier illustrate which middle seats have already sold, or will they allow both the window and aisle seat to purchase it?
Overbooking isn’t uncommon on flights, and what happens if the passenger on the aisle, who purchased the vacant middle seat, doesn’t show and is replaced with a passenger that didn’t pay for the middle seat? If you chose the window under the premise the middle seat had been paid for already, will they then fill that middle seat as well? This leads me to believe that both window and aisle could end up paying for that middle seat generating $78 per middle seat of revenue.
Also…DOT hasn’t made any changes to policy, but that would preclude the sale of these seats if they institute some kind of distancing protocol on flights.
Personally…I like the idea of economy cabins getting these retrofitted seats rather than just a blocked middle seat…You can read more about them here, but I like the idea of the middle seat being flipped and screens being installed.
Opinions, reviews, analyses & recommendations are the author’s alone, and have not been reviewed, endorsed or approved by any of these entities.
Chase Sapphire Preferred® Card
Welcome Offer
Earn 60,000 bonus points after you spend $4,000 on purchases in the first 3 months from account opening.
Annual Fee
$95
Points Earned
Transferrable Chase Ultimate Rewards
- 5x on all travel purchased through Chase Travel℠
- 3x on dining, including eligible delivery services for takeout & dining out
- 3x on select streaming services
- 3x on online grocery purchases
- (excluding Target, Walmart and wholesale clubs)
- $50 Annual Chase Travel Hotel Credit via Chase Travel℠
- The begins immediately for new cardmembers and after your account anniversary for existing cardmembers
- 2x on all other travel
- 10% Anniversary Bonus
- Every year you keep the card, your total spend will yield a 10% points bonus. If you spend $10k in a year, you’ll get 1k bonus points
- Chase Sapphire Preferred continues to redeem at 1.25c in the Chase Travel℠ and the slew of other benefits remain in tact including Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver ( primary ), purchase protections, etc.
- Points are transferrable to 14 Ultimate Rewards partners
- Redeem in Chase Travel℠ for 1.25 cents per point
- No foreign transaction fees
- Suite of Travel and Purchase Coverage
- Auto Rental Collision Damage Waiver is my favorite
- Get complimentary access to DashPass which unlocks $0 delivery fees and lower service fees for a minimum of one year when you activate by December 31, 2027.
- $95 Annual Fee
We keep an up to date spreadsheet that lists the best ever offers: You can find that spreadsheet here.
Historically 80k is a very, very good offer and hit in both 2022 and 2023. In 2021, we saw the offer hit an all time high of 100k. Who knows if that will ever come back.
Main Cast:
Cards that earn flexible points and should be used on the bulk of your purchases.
Supporting Cast:
Cards that earn fixed points in the currency of the airline/hotel and can not be transferred at attractive rates. These cards yield benefits that make it worth keeping, but not necessarily worth putting a lot of your everyday spend on.
The Chase Sapphire Preferred® is exceptional starter card and offers transferrable Ultimate Rewards, and pairs well with other Chase cards.
If you carry this card alongside Chase’s cashback cards like the Chase Freedom Flex® and Chase Freedom Unlimited® or the business versions: Ink Business Cash® , Ink Business Unlimited® you can combine the points into Preferred account and transfer into hotel and airline partners
Annual fee is quite low at $95 a year + you get a 10% anniversary bonus on points + $50 hotel credit in Chase travel.
The responses below are not provided or commissioned by the bank advertiser. Responses have not been reviewed, approved, or otherwise endorsed by the bank advertiser. It is not the bank advertiser's responsibility to ensure all posts and/or questions are answered.