Frontier is a budget airline and as with other budget airlines, you have to pay extra to select a seat. The “best” seats in Frontier are the UpFront Plus seats, which can be free with a Diamond Status. The “preferred/exit row seats” are the next best thing which can be free with any status and if you have high enough status, your entire party can get preferred seats for free. But what if you don’t have any status and don’t want to pay to select a seat?
All of the remaining (that is, seats beside UpFront and preferred/exit) are the “same”. Passengers who do not pay for a seat are typically assigned a seat at check-in. Frontier tends to fill seats from the back of the plane. In other words, if you don’t have an assigned seat and check-in at 24 hours, you are more or less guaranteed to be at the back of the plane. This means checking in late can get you seated in one of the non-premium seats in front of the cabin.
So how do you check this? You can do a fake booking and see up to what portion of the plane has filled up (again seats are assigned from the back of the plane for customers who do not select one). Alternatively, as I did in the screenshot above, you can start the check-in process but not completely go through it. Go through the check-in process to see your seat and if you don’t like it maybe try checking in later. In the screenshots above, you can see that initially, it looked like I was going to get 16F/29A but then checking in later led to 4F/5A.
Obviously, this trick is also good for avoiding the middle seat. In particular, if you are an aisle or window person, you can repeat this process from check-in time until you get an aisle or window seat.
Big Warning
Checking in late may mean you get on the later boarding zone. If the flight is oversold (as it often is these days) and if the flight is full before you can board, then you are going to get denied boarding. Frontier is known to make BS excuses for denying boarding so the aftermath of this may not be very good in terms of filing claims etc. On the other hand, sometimes Frontier also gives preferred seating (if available) to those who arrive late.
The strength of this trick is largely in ensuring you get an aisle or window seat but you can also use it to ensure your seat is in front of the cabin (use it for the latter at your own risk).
