On an airline where overhead space is a paid product, boarding order does more than sort status egos; it decides whether your (paid) carry-on has a home over your head. The queue, decoded, plus the levers a passholder can pull.
The boarding order, roughly
| Stage | Who boards |
|---|---|
| Preboarding | Diamond elites, passengers needing extra time, active and retired military |
| Group 0 | Families with young children, Platinum elites |
| Group 1 | Gold elites, BoardFirst purchasers, premium bundles |
| Group 2 | Paid carry-on with rear seats, Silver elites without carry-on, co-branded cardholders |
| Group 3 | Paid carry-on with front seats |
| Groups 4-5 | No carry-on, back then front |
| Final groups | No carry-on allowed at this point |
The exact composition shifts with policy updates, but the logic is stable: the airline boards people whose bags need bins first, and elites and cardholders ride along.
What a GoWild fare gets you by default
Nothing special. A bare pass fare with no carry-on and no status boards late, which, if you're a personal-item traveler, costs you approximately nothing: your bag goes under the seat and every seat's underside is equally available. Late boarding with no bin needs is a fake problem. Relax, board last, skip the aisle standing.
The levers, cheapest first
- Sit in the back: rear-seated passengers with carry-ons board before front-seated ones. The free seat assignment you didn't pick, per the seats post, frequently puts you back there anyway. The system is accidentally on your side.
- The credit card: cardholders get an earlier group, alongside the bag perks.
- Board First purchase: a one-off $2.99 to $14.99 per direction, worth it roughly never for underseat travelers and occasionally for bin-dependent trips.
- Elite status: the structural fix, covered in the status post. Gold and up boards comfortably early forever.
See every all-in price before Frontier loads.
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