Originally Posted by
Klm is Dead - Long Live KLM
It is possible that the most profitable Skymiles customers are those that send DL lots of partner revenue, fly once in a while and either never redeem their miles or do so in a non-savvy way blowing them at high rates with high fees. It is possible that the least profitable Skymiles customers are the ones that frequent this forum and know how to work the program to their advantage. If you were designing a program to contribute to profitability which customer would you go after and which one would you try to frustrate?
You almost never want to frustrate customers.
$4,000 on deeply discounted fares is still $4,000. If the airline didn't want to sell those fares at those prices, then it wouldn't price them that way - but the fact is, in order to pay to move the planes around, the airline needs nearly full planes. And a plane full of passengers on K fares is better than a plane with 4 people who paid $7k any day of the week.
See: Southwest. Low fares, but full planes.
If you can count on a passenger to regularly fill a seat on your plane at the prices you are charging, that's a good thing. Is it as good as a passenger who pays $7,000 for one seat? No, but you're not going to keep an airline afloat with those types of passengers alone.