kokonutz

In this respect, Gary is like every frequent flyer out there: he wants airlines to tailor their airline and ff program to HIS style of travel and preferences. And what has taken the biggest inflation: international FC award tickets.

Except in his case, he has the added pressure of not just wanting them to tailor those things to his travel preferences, but also to his business model (both blog and booking service).

I saw his fit of pique today, and it kind of made me chuckle. Look, anyone who took it on the nose when Smisek took over United and didn't realize that the days of milk and honey for nothing (lifetime status, benefits for miles flown vs. money paid, CC dumps, MS, etc) were nearing an end wasn't paying attention.

Unfortunately for us, airlines are starting to be run like BUSINESSES. And businesses care about only one thing: the bottom line. Period. EOS. No airline executive is going to go commit Hara-Kiri because they are taking decisions that they think will improve the bottom line.

I have long said, if I ran an airline I would:

- Prioritize the customers who give me the most money. That's how hotels have ALWAYS done it (points per dollar). It was the old way airlines did it/are doing it that was/is incompetent, from a business perspective...to our advantage, to be sure. But from a business perspective it was incompetent nevertheless.

- Price business/first class tickets at 'market' rates rather than inflated rates that result in premium cabins being filled with upgraders and corporate discounters. On my last three United flights, having paid for F, I was the ONLY person in the domestic first cabin who was not upgraded to that cabin (thanks United app). That's a stupid business model. 'Incompetent,' as some might say.

- Value those who pay for a premium cabin fare over everyone else. Check-in, boarding (yes, BEFORE military in uniform and even GS-type-level on a coach fare ticket), in-cabin experience including meal choice, etc. etc. Make it WORTH paying for business/first on EVERY flight.

- Commit 'fraud' with credit card miles: issue credit card miles like candy but then make them incredibly difficult to redeem.

I would do these things because my goal as an airline executive would NOT be to create the MOST loyal customers, but to cultivate the BEST loyal customers. @:-)@:-)@:-)@:-)

If I have nearly described Delta (with a couple of glaring exceptions), then it should be no surprise they are the most profitable of the 'big three.'

HikerT

"I have dishonored myself, my family, and my company."
"I have failed. The program has to be changed."
"We need to bring back the idea of shame."

Oh the irony!

lwildernorva

Given the real gaffes he has occasionally made in the field in which he has expertise, he would have shut down his own blog a long time ago--assuming he was willing to meet the same standard he wants to impose on others in today's post.

84fiero

I almost thought that post was satire at first. Pretty laughable. And from the same guy that waxed poetic about how he still trusts AA after the no-notice overnight changes back in April....now he insists executives must resign because they make changes passengers don't like?

FFPs don't exist because airlines want to be nice to us out of the goodness of their hearts (to the extent airline executives possess hearts). For someone who seems to feel he's an expert on the airline business and everything else, I'm quite puzzled how he could go so far off the deep end.

As kokonutz said quite well:

An executive should quit if they screw things up that hurt the bottom line.

Though runner-up for horrible VFTW post recently has to be his mocking of the TSA employee of the year awardee. I know VFTW has a vendetta against TSA, and personally I oppose much of how they do things and would like to see the agency dissolved or changed.

But it was pretty low class to mock an individual employee like that who did their job well, even if it's a routine low level job. Plenty of comments called him out for it, rightly so. Such petty personal attacks do nothing to help the legitimate debate over TSA policies and practices, IMHO.

lwildernorva

Very much agreed on this. Front-line TSA employees perform the job they were hired for (and paid pretty poorly for--by the way, I'd expect the hole in our security will eventually come because a poorly-paid TSA employee gets bribed to look the other way if something goes down). The policies they execute are developed at a much higher pay grade.

I'm not saying that the TSA does a great job. But laughing at front-line employees keeps ol' Gar from having to confront the real issues of what types of security measures, if any, should be followed in America's airports.

lwildernorva

Geez, and while I'm bombing him for two posts today, I might as well take on a third, the one about the United award discount sale. The statement, "What’s interesting is that they’re offering this discount even though it’s hardly low season to many of these cities — ski destinations and sun destinations alike," is only interesting if you don't grasp that shortly after the first of the year into the middle of February is one of the slowest travel times of the year--people have crammed their breaks into the Christmas/New Year's period, lots of folks have lots of credit card debt from the holidays to pay off, business travel is somewhat down, and lots of tourist destinations are begging for customers. Travel tends to pick up towards the end of February as school spring breaks start to roll around and folks have paid off some of their holiday bills.

Of course, I'd only expect that kind of knowledge, sophistication, and analysis from someone authoring a blog specializing in travel.

Oops!

lwildernorva

It is the holiday season so every day's like a new gift of comedy for me at VFTW. Today's episode, when is a devaluation really just a change? Every time, if you're AA or Hyatt apparently. . .

kokonutz

PH Maldives is now Cat7?!!?!?

HYATT HAS FAILED!
DISHONOR!
INCOMPETENCE!
SHAME!

84fiero

VFTW must have an ample supply of Kool-aid when it comes to certain companies

GuyverII

A comment in yesterday's premium "deal" $165 OW with Virgin reminded me of another website that is a bit shady: Dan's Deals. It brought back memories of having to bathe after going to that place.

ctownflyer

Right, because FT is just a bastion of morality.
Nobody talks about fuel dumps, tricked out cities, or hidden city fares here. No siree.

84fiero

I guess this isn't "advice" per se, but today VFTW posted about the DL employee in Florida who was busted stealing $80K worth of vouchers. He focuses on a quote supposedly from a "Delta spokesman"

VFTW's source is a site called www.travelpulse.com, which doesn't name the Delta spokesperson. Commenter LarryInNYC points out that the original source article from a Florida newspaper (which travelpulse uses for its article) doesn't contain any such Delta quote.

Not sure of the reliability of the Travelpulse site, but it might serve VFTW well to do a smidgen of fact checking on sensationalist posts/quotes

Edit 12 Dec: Gary eventually reached the author of the Travelpulse "article", who wasn't able to substantiate a source for the "Delta spokesman" quote. It's not clear how/why the quote ended up in the Travelpulse article but it's been edited now to remove it. Gary did post a correction today.

Travelpulse seems dodgy for having put the quote in - on its face the quote didn't really sound right for a spokesperson statement, and a company PR person making an official statement usually includes their name.

itsaboutthejourney

VFTW has so many typos and grammatical errors I can't take them seriously anymore.

Then again the shilling for AA and Uber had turned me off a while back.

lwildernorva

I caught the initial article but not the followup since I'm not regularly reading his blog anymore. However, for the inventor of the term "SkyPesos," the article he quoted furthered his narrative about Delta. Didn't matter whether it was true although common sense would have set off the radar on the quote--that would be a pretty clueless Delta spokesperson who would say something like that so I'd want some confirmation of the identity.

And that's a pretty consistent problem for me with VFTW. Gary's not a dummy but his expertise seems too frequently drawn from "facts" he wants to believe are true.

cruisr

TravelPulse is a publication geared to travel agents and travel industry personnel but mostly to travel agents.