Originally Posted by
sbm12
You don't think that a customer who would pay $500-900 for Y->C on a long-haul international flight would balk at that price fora 2 hour domestic segment? It is all about the ratio.
I'm saying that market will be a lot bigger for the domestic upgrade, as it's a more affordable, approachable price. Establish your sub-$100 price point and down goes paid domestic F demand.
We still don't know what the WL looks like for this specific case - quite curious if there were any WL'd pax while this offer was going out.
The airline is in it to make money, not make the elite who got the upgrade feel better about the seat they're getting that someone else might pay $99 more to get in to. If they really wanted to keep it premium and aspirational then getting rid of elite upgrades would be the first step IMO.
They could go to that extreme, but that would also be non-competitive in the US market. Maybe there's a common ground.
Sure, you can make money a bit at a time slashing your F seats to $79-$99 - but that's short-term thinking at the expense of long term strategy. However, that does seem to be $misek's MO so far so who knows.