US Airways Dividend Miles (Pre-FlightFund Merger) - VP Marketing Baldanza On-Line Chat 9/4 at 11AM

I'm not usually over here, because I don't normally fly US Air more than a time or two a year; but I thought the folks most immediately affected by the changes to the Dividend Miles program might like to know that the man who "oversaw" (to use the Washington Post's language from today's edition) the changes, Senior VP for Marketing and Planning B. Ben Baldanza, is doing a live chat on washingtonpost.com beginning at 11:00am (I presume EDT) today.

Here's the information from the Post's "Business Class" column for business travelers.

###BEGIN EXCERPT###

Do you have any questions or concerns about US Airways' recent ticket-policy changes or the future of its frequent-flier mileage program? Baldanza, who oversaw last week's changes, will offer answers in an online chat on washingtonpost.com Friday at 11 a.m.

###END EXCERPT###

This should be fun. Hope these things go better than the ones here on FT, which tend to be quite useless once the questions get narrowed down to the most mundane ones. Unfortunately, I must be out of the office at 11a, so I hope someone here can monitor and give us a report on what gets asked and answered.

Your post says today(Wed), but the excerpt you cut/paste says Friday.

To clarify - it's definitely Friday:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/liveonline/schedule.htm

This oughta' be good. Let's not all lynch him at once.....

Sorry; print-on-paper version I read said "today" as in Wednesday; web version I cut and pasted (without reading closely, obviously) must reflect a schedule change.

They are going to cave on the elite requalification. This little appearance will give them the cover to do it. They will take suggestions, respond sympathetically, and back off. But the cat is out of the bag. There is no question how they feel about that facet of the program. If you stay, you're nuts (unless you have no choice). They will just start restricting access.

deelmakur,

I hope you are right about them backing off on the elite status qualification. It could have even been a 'throwaway' from the beginning to give them something to back down on in order to make the other changes less onerous.

BTW, I probably won't make the chat, so I went ahead and posed this question: "If you don't value all my business, why should I do business with you at all?"

deelmakur, you've mentioned this a couple of times now. If they retract the fare class status earning policy, what purpose would restricting upgrade access serve?

Assuming the intent of this absurd drill was to force business flyers back to the "refundable" fares, I don't see what tighter upgrade inventory control would do. I think most would agree that US Airways customers currently enjoy some of the highest upgrade percentages--at all tiers--among the majors. So lack of front cabin inventory does not seem to be an issue.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by deelmakur:
They will just start restricting access.</font>

There are all kinds of things they can do to change the elite program and restrict it.

Management thinks there is a problem -- the perks they provide are too expensive for what we pay for our tickets. Their original solution was to change the rules and make it harder to get the benefitsand perks.

Assuming they back off, it would only follow that they cut back on the perks or at the very least restrict them. DM was one of the best programs in the industry for a variety of reasons, from upgrades to rewards. I have no reason to think that they won't be changing this.

They can shorten the windows, for starters. I was a big Continental flyer for many years, when back in the early '90's they brought a guy named Don Valentine in from Southwest. He did the same sort of thing, and the outcry was incredible. DM has been a more generous program because it needs to be. The route system has limitations. They are not a carrier of choice. Many of us use them because the program is good, and as such, we're willing to take connections when we could get there on a more direct routing. Back to Continental. They dumped a lot of executives, did a mea culpa (I remember going to meeting at the Newark Marriott, where the newly installed Bethune showed up, made his famous "pizza without cheese speech", and promised it would be like the good old days. Readers of the CO board on FT will note the cheese is back off again. CO decided "if they want metal, we'll give 'em metal", and they have floated a bunch. Meanwhile, if you look for upgrade seats on their flights, using ITN, you will see F0 most of the time. F is what they use for what we call G. They also automated the upgrade process. Since they wrote the algorithm for that program, only they know what factors are used to prioritize the issuance of those. Here(USAir) you have an insolvent business, out dumping on their core (with only about 10% of customers buying full fare, and not much to be made on the low end discounts, we have to be the vast midlevel). As that core, we represent lots of frequency, but less spending than the top 10%. Instead of trying to figure out how to market us (and it probably wouldn't take much to push our average spend up 20 to 30 percent), they just unload. There is some elasticity in our category, but trying to shove us from $200 to $2000 fares is mindless. That's what troubles me. They don't get it. Staying with them, trying to preserve the perks you have previously enjoyed, is a zero sum game. They don't buy it, and they won't stop trying to shut the party down. The place will be chopped up and sold anyway, so you might as well bite the bullet and make the best deal you can elsewhere.

I've got half a dozen questions in...