Originally Posted by
eponymous_coward
Guess what? In many cases, flying LH/LX/AC/NH instead of UA? United still wins, because the TATL/TPAC money is pooled among ATI JV partners.
Thus, even if they lose... they can win.
Now that I shop for my business class tickets on Orbitz rather than UNITED dot com, I find the DL tends to have the cheapest business fares. If my priority is price, that's where I go.
BA and VS have similar fares to UA. If service and product are my priority that's where I go.
If Smisek's plan is to commoditize each seat every day as the OP posits, then he is entering a field where UNITED will lose, because UNITED is not competitive on business class seats nor service nor price. What kept folks like me on UA was not those things. It was the Mileage Plus 1k and MM benefits that Smisek just gutted.