lingua101

Why SQ should do the restriction? It is the same miles that you need to burn anyway. It is first come first serve basis. Well if you have higher tier of course your wait list may have better chance.

To put more prospective, actually the same miles for higher tier is actually lesser "cost" (all things being equal) as elite member earn extra miles.

Jaunt411

When I first read your suggestion, I didn't realize that non-availability was coming. Now that I do, I think you may have a good argument. I like the idea of PPS having some significant benefit above Elite Silver/Gold, because at the moment it really doesn't have any wow-factor for me.

Archieflyer

But SQ does make money on those customers. They sell those miles to the banks awarding the miles to those customers.

For banks to want to buy KF miles, there needs to be a demand for those miles by the banks' customers. That's only going to happen when there is a way to spend those miles. With SQ's penchant for YQ and blocking of premium cabins for partners, the only reason to get KF miles would be to get premium seats. Restrict that, and you remove any reason for bank customers to want KF miles, which will remove a revenue stream for SQ.

Could SQ treat their top tier FFs better? Maybe, but to be honest, they also know that the PPS group is a captive audience. You NEED to continue to fly SQ in premium cabins to maintain that status. Take your business elsewhere, & you drop back to 'mere mortal' gold. So, there is really little incentive to treat you much nicer than a KF Gold (besides making PPS more 'desirable', of course).

GRUflyer

Do You honestly think SQ should be more worried about less miles sold to Amex than the paid F and C the get?!

Of course revenue is good revenue from all sources, but they are an airline, not a App designed to make money from transfers only.

And to your point I said restrict access to F and R - people could still redeem miles for C - which is better than most F around there anyway, and certainly far better than UA, AA and DL C and F - the captive airlines for the Americans.

mitwg

For a 8/12 seat configuration, a lot of the cabins do fly empty so there's probably no point in changing the current system that is already working quite well.

A 4 seat configuration is a bit different though. Given the fact that there's only 4 seats onboard, that probably means there's only 1 or 0 seats at any time available for redemption/upgrade, with chances of another redemption seat being released closer to departure significantly lower than the current 8/12 configs.

So if someone is awaiting for a seat to be opened and snaps them up 320 days ahead of their trip (good on them for being proactive), that means there's no chance that anybody else will be able to redeem on that flight.

Thus on these configs, I wouldn't mind SQ restricting the F seat to be a saver upgrade from J only, rather than allow outright redemptions at the saver level (but still allow standard/full redemptions). This way, you still have a shot at redeeming the F seat closer to the departure and it does not significantly discriminate against non PPS members.

GRUflyer

This is not a response only to this poster, but in general....

Some of you keep bringing up the fact that there should be no "favouring" PPS members....

You do know that those people are the ones that keep giving SQ the resources to be industry benchmark in C and F, right?

For me this argument is like telling me I cannot save a bigger slice of my Birthday cake to my best client, because that is unfair. But there would be no party, had it not been for the income that client brings.

So while I do agree on not restricting C awards to anyone, if F has become so much exclusive on SQ, so should its redemption.

Maybe allowing redemptions at saver level for PPS only and standard for everyone else?

mitwg

I would in fact love this, if they made all F redemptions PPS only. In fact, if you really thought about this, making J redemptions PPS only could make sense too. These are the people that actually fly J in the first place after all.

I just didn't want to cope with the backlash by suggesting this on FT

Without making this a hard rule, SQ could easily achieve this by awarding like 10x miles on any PPS value eligible flights, then also increasing the redemption chart across the board by 10x for J/F. A bit of a extreme example here but it's definitely one way to keep people out without having hard rules (much like how R only was available as a full redemption before 2012).

NetJets Germany

I can see where you are coming from, honestly, and I think your birthday cake analogy is a good one. But if this is the case, consider my earlier example of when I spent SGD50k annually on Y tickets, but was excluded from the PPS Club, whereas someone who perhaps only bought SGD25k worth of tickets in C and F was invited. Who is the bigger source of revenue to SQ here? And who, perhaps not unimportantly, the more frequent and loyal flyer?

I do not encourage a development that we are currently seeing in the US, where your airline spend determines the number of miles you can earn with them (Although even there I believe status is still earned based on the actual distance miles / segments you clock), but I could reasonably see why that would be a "fairer" way of assessing pax value to an airline, especially were it used to determine status. Having said that, one could hardly call this a "Frequent Flyer" or "Loyalty" Program anymore, because the measure to determine eligibility to the "Club" would shift strictly to profitability / turnover, rather than passenger loyalty.

You stated earlier that airlines should not value KF miles and money earned by CC partners as highly as that on their own airfares, but this seems to be contradictory to your birthday cake analogy. In this case, would the biggest client and source of revenue / profit for SQ not arguably be the CC companies, and not their bum-in-seat passengers? And yes, I do have a CC which allows me to earn KF miles, although I am not US-based (Singapore and China, in my case), but perhaps so do you, too?

Another poster suggested that they could not see any award availability anymore on a certain route in F in 2016. This could potentially simply be SQ's decision not to release any award seats in F on that route for a while, regardless of who booked that seat. It would be mere conjecture to say the award space that perhaps had been available earlier got filled by "US based KF CC millionaires or KF Low Status holders" before the other poster could get in there first.

I also agree that one of the perks of being a top tier member of any FFP, and KF is no different here, should be that the higher you are in the hierarchy, the closer to the front you are on the waitlist queue. That makes total sense to me!

Finally, as you said that currently your favourite FFP was probably M&M was because (aside from LH's F product) they do restrict award availability in F to highest tier members. From what I know / have heard, however, most miles-rich pax who regularly travel in C or F don't really seem to be that fussed about the award availability to them, but instead want the airline to focus on the on-board experience and the quality of the ground services. Or do you think that is not the case?

mitwg

This is slightly off topic but between someone who spends 50k annually on Y vs someone who does 2-3 trips in J to break 25k, I'd think the 25k passenger would still be more profitable to SQ, due to the way costs & profit margins work.

This is putting it very simply, but I sort of see the PPS vs other KF tiers as like this.

1. KF Gold - someone who has spent $50k on 10000 bus trips from home to work.
2. PPS - someone who has spent $25k on 250 chauffeur rides from home to work.

Chances are for the bus operator, whether that one passenger rides with them or not in the future wouldn't impact their overall profitability as much, compared to the chauffeur operator, who'd loose a bit more if the customer decides to take his/her business elsewhere.

Airlines are corporations that are expected to make profits (not including some that I'm thinking of right now) and loyalty in the airline's eye is the passenger's ability to contribute more profits (not gross revenue) in the future.

With a commercial view, I wouldn't care if passenger flew with us for 7000 years in the past, if he/she isn't going to contribute to my profits next year. That passenger is worthless for the airline's future plans (apart from the intangible benefits he/she may contribute through word of mouth or some other indirect means).

Given that profitability is what management would be judged on, I think its perfectly logical that those who contribute the most to the airline should be given preferential treatment (PPS).

lokijuh

Why bother doing this, when you can keep the status quo as I mentioned upthread? It seems foolish to dissuade the credit card crowd by formally publishing restrictions, when mechanisms are already used to manipulate availability to different tiers - initially through availability that can be seen online, and also through waitlist clearance.

My partner is TPPS, I was PPS, now I am KF Gold (albeit with TP designation courtesy of my "spouse"), and From our experience TPPS availability and waitlist clearance is better than PPS. And whilst I think PPS and Golds see same availability, anecdotally waitlist clearance when I was PPS seemed better than now that I am a mere gold. (Noting that for redemptions - partner status is not taken into account- although onboard and at airport I am treated like a TPPS).

As I said SQ do already restrict availability in a big way, but if they choose, they can still dripfeed availability to the status-less (golds, silvers, and genuinely status-less credit card points hoarders) as incentive to either continues spending big in Y, or continuing to transfer points (which are both still sources of cash for the airline).

lokijuh

Not convinced this is the case, it may depend on fare types purchased. Someone spending $25K in deeply discounted J fares, vs someone spending $50K in fully flexible Y fares may generate similar profitability. Also don't forget the cost side of the ledger. Whilst business class pax cost more to feed, water (alcohol) and service (higher FA: pax ratio), most importantly, they also take up much more real estate on a plane.

mitwg

Its definitely not as cut & clear and extreme as the example I used, but it's a well published fact that bulk of the airline profits come from premium classes over coach.

For example, Delta revealed that their top 5% of flyers generated 26% of their revenue, and there are other analysts that says things like:

"An airline will make between five to 10 times the profit flying a business class passenger than they will an economy class passenger on a long-haul route," Henry Harteveldt, a travel industry analyst and founder of the Atmosphere Research Group, said.

Speaking of PPS members, the people that spend $25k+ a year in J are likely to be the ones that fly on corporate accounts, which is more than likely to book into a flexible business class fare. On these fares, SQ would easily make a few grand per long-haul flight (SIN-LHR for example).

In contrast, it's probably the regular Y flyers are more likely to book into discount economy, given that they would have a more restrictive corporate travel policy (or their own business) which may even limit the fares being booked into sub-fare classes and specify that only the cheapest class can be booked.

lokijuh

Not necessarily true. Often corporate Y flyers fly in short-med haul flexible fares, where the $/mile is quite high, that's all I do. For me long haul is in discounted J - i.e. these days not on SQ!

I know airlines make a big song and dance about the profitability of J passengers, but if they were so profitable in their own right, you would have lots of smaller planes flying around with business class only. The reality is I am sure that airlines need to fill a reasonable chunk of the economy cabin before all that business class revenue makes a flight profitable. Vice versa (other than short haul LCCs), it seems you need to sell a good chunk of J fares as well to make a flight profitable.

mitwg

Yeah well said. It's probably a delicate balance of economics and the same cannot be generalised for the whole network.

I'm not an expert on economics but from business school 101, on some routes, it'll be probably be that Y fits in the loss minimisation point ATC > P > AVC whereas for some other routes, J may even fit in there.

SQueeze

I doubt SQ will publish publicly any more than the current restrictions of long haul J/F for KF members only (excluding partners but including CC transfer to KF accounts). It will move on a natural path towards a more restrictive situation as follows:

Here's what we are facing right now:

1. Zero F availability on many routes with 4F seats and by 2016", I believe all long haul will be 80-90% with 4 seats except for the 77WNs?

2. The Suites will be the only ones with saver availability and it will be harder to get since all the demand will be channeled here.

3. Pax will then start forking out for standard awards. Note that no Waitlist is even possible to the 4F-seaters as of now on long hauls. Aussie routes and Japan may be. Not Europe.

4. Or pax will Waitlist for Suites and the availability will be handed out closer to date based on status.

May be even SQ doesn't have to devalue the chart anymore. It's automatically so with the drying up of saver availability.

SQ is currently still cheapest to redeem in terms of miles deducted (with high cash outlay in taxes) compared to competitors that is in my radar: CX and EY. Very soon, it will no longer have that advantage.