Originally Posted by
travelinmanS
Isn't this one of the main point of mergers to increase size and market share thereby increasing pricing power over your customers? This can be done by actively raising prices or reducing benefits that have a cost to provide. This is what UA will do and it should be a surprise to nobody.
I could never understand the cheerleading for this merger from people here on FT, it was never going to make the MP program better or even UA as an airline better from a customer's perspective. Mergers are about increasing the bottom line by decreasing competition and consumer choice. Has there ever been a merger that truly benefited the consumer long term? My prediction is that in a year's time SWU's will be severely restricted by fare class, there will be fewer SWU's given out, E+ will be history, routes will be rationalized, planes will be jammed, prices will go up, but boy oh boy we can say we fly the world's largest airline and they have a cool new paint job.
We should all be thanking our lucky stars that AA is still managing to operate as a stand alone enterprise. Once they merge with someone and shrink their program UA will have no incentive to compete on the basis of a mileage program and will probably create some Delta like program that everyone will hate.
I agree with you on the goal of mergers, but doesn't always translate to reality in the airline industry. Management may be bold right now in a time of relative financial health and stability, but we all know the dramatic ups and downs of this industry. There will certainly be down cycles ahead and it is during those down cycles that management may think twice about alienating and ultimately losing some of UA's most loyal customers.
Originally Posted by
UA1K4EVER
Thousands agree, thousands disagree, but thousands can also come together to try to stir the ship along a course that they view as more favorable to them, by chanting, "MP + OneP = MP!!", to build a ground swell for E+ and the current SWU, CR1, EQM/EQS 1K qualification rules to stay. In other words, we should request that they keep the better of the two FF programs, which is MP, by far. There is no need to "align" anything, and please spare us the "enhancements". The OneP members have one year to get used to flying more to make top elite in the new UA, but the perks, if they stay as they are under MP, will be much better than those they got as top OneP elites. Seems fair to me.
Agree with you, this is absolutely the time for everyone to make their voices heard. The only chance of retaining some of the best MP benefits will be through mass communication to MP, customer relations, etc. expressing what is most valuable and important. It will be much more difficult to reverse detrimental decisions once they are made.