Newsstand - NY Times: Frequent Fliers Worry: Is Elite Status Worth It?

Like many other travel agents and frequent fliers who know how much most people actually pay for flights, Blake Fleetwood was unimpressed with the recent ballyhooed initiative by Delta Air Lines to reduce domestic walk-up fares to a maximum of $998 round-trip.

In its announcement, Delta, which reported losses of $5.2 billion in 2004, said that last-minute travelers would no longer be stuck paying sky-high published walk-up fares that in some cases were six or seven times higher than advance-purchase fares.

"It's insane. Nobody was paying $1,500 for a walk-up fare to California," said Mr. Fleetwood, who is the president of Planetarium Travel, a group of travel agencies in the New York area. Those fares have been "unrealistic" for years, he added. "The fact that they're lowering them is more in line with the reality out there," he said, adding that discount carriers like JetBlue and Southwest still offer lower fares on most routes than the revised ones on Delta and its competitors among major airlines, which quickly matched Delta's new fares on competitive routes.

New York Times link (http://travel2.nytimes.com/2005/01/30/travel/30prac.html?8td)

My comments: Joe seems to think the 1K level at UA is called Premier. Wrong :td:

Little suspicious of Terry Trippler's comments that he heard from a friend there were 86 Platinum and Gold passengers on the standby upgrade list for the flight from Seattle to MSP.

Trippler always says something negative in order to get his name in the news.

I did feel the comments by Beth Shultis regarding NW's policy on upgrades were right on.

While I seem to be one of the rare birds in FT who doesn't base their loyalty solely on being able to upgrade to First Class (:D), Mr. Trippler's argument is valid in part because of it.

Still, if an airline does not fly where you want to - or need to - go, then it doesn't much matter if they have one First Class seat or 1000, does it?