i live in stl and decided yesterday that i had to be in las on 8/12 returning on 8/13. my first thought was will i be able to get a decent itinerary and if so at what cost.
we only have one nonstop a day and those times fit my schedule so i priced it and it came out at $444. i was pleasantly surprised ( shocked would be a better term) and put it on hold. i then checked wn to see what they were charging and it was exactly the same. back to aa.com to reserve some seats and request upgrades and i notice that on the return there is only one seat in coach and seven seats in first and they are still selling these seats at what i consider a reasonable price. i checked expert flyer and there are 7s across the board and 7 upgrades for miles or evips.
i then called the exp desk to see why i could only reserve an aisle seat in the very back of the plane and the agent could not figure it out because the seat map showed the plane sold out but everything was wide open for booking. she thought it was very odd.
my point in starting this thread is that we all tend to believe that revenue management knows what they are doing but in this case i find it hard to believe that they are still matching wn's fares even when their planes are full. i would have thought it would have been better to hold those few seats out and hope to get full fare either stl-las or on a connection through stl closer to flight time.
my conclusion from this is that aa appears to have a policy of matching wn's fares right up until the plane is oversold. i guess all the talk of reducing capacity and raising fares is only rhetoric on the routes where wn ( or other low cost carriers) flies as they still are only going to charge wn's fares. if aa has in fact decided that they need to continue to match wn then with their cost structure they will never come out on those routes. it may also explain why they are embracing all these other charges ( ie checked luggage) as a way to match fares but bring in extra revenue. since most of those who are having to pay those charges are the so called "ma and pa kettles" of the world who do not understand the system it appears to me to be an elaborate game of "bait and switch". in the end wn continues to set the prices on overlapping routes which is good for the consumer but bad for aa. in the old days crandall could pick up the phone and try and work things out but unfortunately for aa those days are gone.
