<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by stockmanjr:
Anyone who blames the ff programs for the problems that the industry is not thinking straight.The only profitable part of many U.S airlines today is there ff programs and with a further reduction of them people will vote with there feet.</font>
I think that's a bit of an oversimplication. Here's a situation where FF programs have been used to keep prices up: Fortress Hubs. Whenever a LCC offers service to a Fortress Hub, the incumbent carrier will often match the low fares. If there were no FF program, this would probably be a good way to encourage healthy competition. But in the presence of a strong FF program offered by the hub carrier, a great many people will take the low fare but fly on the hub carrier. This "competition" is great for the traveling public, but only so long as the LCC continues to operate. A classic example of this is what Legend tried to do at DAL, AA's response, and how it all ended up. There are many other examples.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">If the airlines believe reducing FF benefits except to full fare pax will increase the number of full F/J/Y tickets sold they are full of themselves.I dobut most companies will allow workers to spend 2x the price in order to get more ff miles or to upgrade.</font>
Probably not. I don't think any airline thinks it's going to substantially increase the number of full F/J/Y tickets sold
industry-wide by any substantial margin. The issue is of those that do get sold, how many are on each carrier? If an airline offers free upgrades which are easy to confirm and other perks for those passengers on Y or near-Y fares, don't you think that those passengers that do fly on those fares will migrate to that carrier, all other things being equal?