kettle1

It is about time (they are doing what DL did one year before).

ARTICLE: http://news.investors.com/102315-777...lled&ven=yahoo

AA is very smart in this move. ^

dddc

Lets wait to see what the full details are. No good offering a few super cheap seats to the early birds if the rest are normal price. Makes a great headline, but if when the majority of pax find regular prices and cheaper elsewhere it won't breed good will.

tom911

May not be a smart move for passengers and elite flyers, though, or even business travelers that have a corporate policy to buy the lowest fare, if those fares don't come with miles. The details will matter and there aren't any in the article.

Tom in Hong Kong

ccengct

Ding ding ding. Corporate travel departments will eat this up. I hope it's restricted to routes where the bottom-of-the-barrel LCCs fly nonstops. But it could spread.

AANYC1981

Enjoy not having a seat assignment until day or departure, no elite benefits etc on these fares. They're basically taking the cheap fares that are already offered today and making elites buy into higher fare brackets just to maintain what you have already today.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

I see a real thinning of the elite herds by 2017, particularly EXPs.

iadisgreat

Most large corporate travel departments have their own agreements on fares with the airlines. I would expect they wouldn't be offering these fares to travelers as it would certainly increase reimbursable costs due to fees being charged in. I don't work in a travel department, but I know enough to know I would be much less willing to travel weekly if I didn't get any miles (and I'm sure this applies to 99% of corporate travelers). Loss of talent would far outweigh any benefit.

TL;DR - These fares will be for the leisure flyer, not the corporate one.

MiamiAirport Formerly NY George

Many mid sized companies have no travel department. Travel tends to be booked through an administrative function and usually a mix of price and schedule with some companies extreme on price. So if you happen to be a FF in this type of company you likely might be stuck with fares that provide no benefits. After all, your company is getting you from Point A to Point B for a business reason, not for you to earn EQMs and RDMs and get goodies such as free upgrades.

JDiver

Yes. I think this is the beginning of the changes we've been speculating about. Some kind of "Basic" barebones fares with everything unbundled, fewer (or less?) miles and points, etc.

77W_12A

Agree. I would imagine the queue waiting for the SWU to clear on an EXP heavy route such as HKG-DFW will thin out considerably.

In the future, I can see when booking a ticket will be a similar experience in shopping for a car online: If you want hand baggage only, you pay xxxx fare. If you want miles eligible fare, add xxxx amount....assigned seating, checked baggage, etc.

AAMillionaire

I wonder how this will work with status-based perks.

For example, I'm Plat and get to select MCE seating, a free checked bag and early boarding. If I purchase one of these "no-frills" fares that, for example does not allow seat assignment, will I be able to select a seat based on my status?

Will be interesting to see how this pans out in a number of areas.

arollins

This is long overdue. There has been too many "challenges" matches going. I think the main ones started a few years ago when they did it to UA flyers, followed by DL flyers, along with the numerous "by invitation only". Wasn't it last year that numerous flyers tried to get on the US challenge of flying 30k miles become CP which will latter be EXP, and now the last group that got in with the closing of challenges. All of these challenges are fine as it increases the # of flyers, I can see that with the UA, many where upset with the UA/CO merging that looked elsewhere, however, ultimately, I wonder how many do stick around and earn their status the long way.

I took advantage of a GOLD challenge many years ago, so did my wife, except for PLT. This was when it was free back them. Been earning our status the long way.

iadisgreat

I did try to caveat my comments with a "large" qualifier to avoid such, but you did get me. I guess my thought is that for the vast majority of frequent flyers this will not actually have a big impact (based on reasons previously mentioned). Also, while one does travel due to business need, there are tradeoffs companies need to take into account. I, for one, would be much less likely to travel constantly away from my fiancé were I not able to mitigate that loss with a trip to Bali/Maldives/Australia/Europe in business or first for the two of us for pennies on the dollar. Not to mention the other benefits I take advantage of from being EXP.

I would imagine most, if not all, members of this forum have the same inclination.

chitownflyer

I am a UA flyer, but I hope AA does not go down the path taken by DL & UA in implementing massive cost cutting like UA and a revenue based loyalty program like Delta which was copied by United.

Xero

Maybe initially the new "LCC" fares will be cheaper, but as time goes on, they will be priced the same as the lowest fares today. Just like how the airlines promised that bag fees would reduce prices.

In addition, I've seen expensive last minute fares that book into Q. AA could even penalize last minute travelers by giving no miles and raise the prices.