Originally Posted by
morrisunc
I will be doing monthly trips to nrt in j class - can't think of a reason why I shouldn't credit to dl or ua and get 65,000 miles instead of 25k miles per trip.
Good for you, but think about what a rare and unusual customer you are in the overall spectrum of AA customers. Of course you should get proportionally greater rewards; you always have. But now you feel you deserve
most of the rewards, and a lavish amount thereof, to the point where your overseas J/F tickets will effectively be BOGOs every time while a less spendy but still loyal customer will take years to amass enough chips for such a redemption, assuming he doesn't succumb to rationality and bug off to JetBlue.
If the FF program is build entirely around customers like you, and the other 98 or 99 percent are cheesed off, it is not good for the overall equilibrium of this or any airline. The mistake UA/Smisek have made is to focus all their love on GS types. Even UA 1Ks feel now they count for nothing and are flying Virgin America, etc. -- and UA has the guts to explicitly discourage a vast sub-1K customer cohort in a period of atrocious reliability and service levels.
Whenever I see an FTer who flies overseas in full-fare J once or twice a month gloating about how meet and right it is that most of the award-oxygen in the room end up in their private tank, I wonder how long they think their airline would last were all the screwed customers to migrate elsewhere or stay home.
Originally Posted by
AZ Travels the World
...they'll need to reduce the payout of miles elsewhere to pay for it. Which will come from those on cheaper tickets, in the back of the plane.
This will happen, it's just a matter of exactly when.
Not if the UA experiment backfires, and not if some non-lemming in revenue management figures out how much marginal / incremental revenue you kick away when you get everyone below the 1-2% super-duper-elite shopping for flights on price and price alone.
Originally Posted by
Superguy
I don't think it's certain at all. Just because DL and UA jump off a cliff doesn't mean AA has to...
AA can watch and see what happens in both programs. If both companies continue to be profitable, and probably more importantly, grow at AA's expense, then they can look at implementing it. AA can also market to both airlines' pax that fit into that donut hole and offer them something better. If that approach works, then AA would be foolish to change its program.
The lemming mentality is scary - both in airline management and in the FT mentality.
I fully agree. ^
It's also scary and sad that the FT of ten years ago was largely about sharing the wealth and showing others in the community how to get ahead; now, with points and miles programs in decline, it's more about a minority of super duper customers kicking the lower tiers off the rope ladder and down to the Greyhound depot.