Or maybe they actually care about their elites and are willing to extend them certain benefits on award seats for their family/friends. No reason to think that it is necessarily a negative, though I know that can be difficult sometimes. Oh, and if you read carefully you'll see that the ELR seats were being charged for in this particular case. And everyone gets one free bag to AUA. So those aspects of it are not "givaways" from CO. Much easier to keep the negative attitude if you do not bother paying attention to the actual facts, huh?

As for the "tens of dollars" schtick, glad to see there's a new mantra out there that, once again, doesn't really mean anything.