Originally Posted by YEG Guy
Pooling of funds amongst friends is not the issue here. What AC has done, IMHO, is prevent a large employer from bulk purchasing Latitude passes and then handing them out to employees on an as needed basis. An example is ChevronTexaco. Chevron has their retail operations hedquartered in YVR and the Exploration HQ in YYC. If the Latitude Pass were transferrable, then a secretary could buy one pass under their name and then transfer individual segments to anyone in the company/department on an as required basis. This defeats the purpose of the Latitude pass as each traveller is only going once or twice. For large corporations such as ChevronTexaco, AC has a corporate sales department to handle their needs.
What the Latitude pass does for AC is lock in the very frequent traveller. Because corporate travellers are required to select the cheapest routing, they often book AC in one segment and WS on the return on the Western Triangle. The Latitude pass locks in the traveller for all segments and over multiple roundtrips. $239 per segment is approximately the average segment cost for a "book one week ahead traveller". It is very easy for the passenger to convince their employer that locking with AC in is a sound business decision at these rates. However, if the charge was higher, then it is more cost effective for the employer to continue booking per segment.
The fact is that large corporations also negotiate large discounts with AC. For these corporate customers, the Latitude Pass may be irrelevant, or they may be able to negotiate a similar arrangment. Also, if I was a large corporation, and for some reason I didn't have an AC rate, I could pay for a latitude purchase by those employees whose travel patterns justify it and I would be ahead of the game. What this will do is circumvent no-business class rules at corporate travel offices that took effect in recent years. Now the customer can have his J class while in effect paying a discounted high-end, fully flexible Y fare.