Originally Posted by
Science Goy
At the same time, you're talking about an infinitesimally tiny fraction of AA's customers. Upending the whole system to prevent this, if done inelegantly, could alienate a much larger fraction of AA's middle-of-the-road elites -- customers whom AA almost certainly is interested in keeping.
How do you the volume of customers who fit this profile?
Also keep in mind the multi-qualification - Points, Miles, Segments - was set up
before the introduction of fees.
When an elite passengers buys a discounted coach ticket, AA loses the opportunity to charge the person in that seat a variety of money-earning fares.
My point was simple: the more fees an airline can attach to a non-status pax, the more they will want to sell that seat to a non-status pax. Supposedly AA was able to get over $2 billion in fees in 2011 -- and Spirit for example earns 33 percent of its revenues from fees.
All I'm saying is AA is likely to figure a way that it only waives fees for higher paying elites at some point in the future. Airlines of course are not going to want to piss off pax buying higher priced tickets