Originally Posted by
ORDUnitedMetal
I'm really having a tough time understanding peoples arguements on why airlines will be suffering becuase of this move and losing "tons" of passengers. Not quite! The elite passengers do not pay baggage fee's, therefore, this is only impacting the traveler who flies 2-3 times/yr.
On a premium, yield basis elite's provide a huge chunk of business, but kettles are still a huge (probably the single most) portion of the business. Do the math and you'll see that those 2-3 times they travel on legacy carriers is going to whittle down to 1, then none as the sting from showing up to the airport and being slapped with punishment fees will cause kettles to look to WN and B6. Humans are creatures of habit and will not put up with it for long.
The issue here, and this is HUGE:
There is no pricing parity in our market today. Southwest will save a two-bag-toting Kettle $120 round-trip, but they don't know that when they are booking through online websites. I am waiting to see if online travel agencies and airlines are forced to show the TOTAL cost of the trip at the time of booking. The bag fees would be eliminated almost overnight. This (*) disclosure stuff is enough to drive anyone insane.