Originally Posted by
LockheedElectra
Ben's quote about not being a charity is mind boggling. I spend over $100K per year, I buy between 2 and 4 Z/J a year, buy higher price Flex to get qualification miles and yes, I get a lot of upgrades on domestic and do two or three long haul upgrades. Not sure how that makes me a charity case (wrong thing to say Ben). What they don't get is upgrading YYZ to ATL is not a big deal to me, I do it because I can, but getting 2 or 3 international upgrades is the value of the program to me. I figure under the new regime, I will get one international upgrade, and maybe a couple useless domestic. If they are comparing to the US airlines, this is actually worse. They are trying to compare themselves to CX and SG. Wrong thing to do. In any case, I voted with my wallet last night, if others do the same, it could get interesting, but it will be hard to get me back other than to use the few eUG's I will have as MM.
I should state for the record we value all our customers, indeed we know where our bread is buttered. That said, what I was trying to convey was the idea that the ostensible
expectation of getting something for free (i.e. sitting in J but paying for Y) is not a sustainable business practice. Why is it wrong of us to compare ourselves to our Asian competitors? Many posters on here excoriate our J cabin compared to these guys, so why is it wrong to try and improve (and implement the access controls they already have) ? I've said this many times, but from what I'm hearing it would seem that we are expected to have the J quality of a Euro/Asian carrier with the access policies of an American one. That just doesn't work.
Look, I won't deny the discrete cost of moving somebody from Y to an empty J seat at boarding 45 mins before departure isn't huge, but it does two things:
1) It cheapens the J product - I will again reference our European and Asian competitors who have very tight access policies to their premium cabins, and point out how highly valued they are, especially compared to our American competition - ever wonder why F fares are so cheap on US carriers?
2) It sets an expectation. If there's an expectation that for >50% of the time you can sit there without paying for it, why would you ever be incentivised to do so?