Originally Posted by
BearX220
Hate to sound like a broken record, but that's exactly my point, and the problem. AS doesn't attract customers living outside the Pacific corridor or Alaska. It doesn't attract business travelers who need options, because low frequencies. It doesn't attract price-conscious customers, because it's rarely the price leader. It doesn't attract customers who want a premium inflight experience, because it doesn't offer one.
So who the heck is this airline for, anyway? IMO, appeal narrowing, scale expanding, equals trouble.
For me, with a mix of business and leisure travel (the business travel usually booked 3-8 weeks in advance, always lowest-logical-fare coach, so not last minute and reasonably flexible in timing), it's a mix of things.
- They're usually price-competitive, even if not quite the low fare leader.
- Their schedule has its annoyances (the lack of a banked hub in SEA making connections awful between outstations with infrequent flights -- for me, YLW/EAT to east coast destinations -- is the biggest for me), but generally gets me where I want to go.
- I find their service to be competent, friendly, and efficient. They don't try to be annoyingly flashy (VX) or annoyingly cute/overfriendly (WN), but they generally answer their phones quickly, have helpful airport staff, etc.
- I find them more pleasant to fly in coach than any other domestic airline. Not hugely so; they're not a true premium airline that would command a multiple hundred or thousand dollar premium (which I wouldn't be willing to pay anyway even for a Emirates F Suite flying nonstop YYF-PVD when that's where I want to fly). But they're appreciably more reliable and more friendly than the competition.
- Their frequent flyer program and affordable credit card with the very strong companion fare makes them the low fare leader for family trips.
- Their lack of change fees for MVP Golds and anyone outside 60 days is very customer friendly; that leads me to book long-in-advance family travel with them even when they're not the cheapest. (In fact, I don't even look at the competition for family trips outside 60 days: if I'm willing to pay the fare AS offers, I go for it because of the lack of change fees.)
- A very small thing that I loved when I had a lap infant: they automatically block an empty seat next to an adult with a lap infant, so if the plane didn't go out full, the two of us with a lap infant nearly always got three seats.
So it's a mix of things, but the general theme is that AS is friendly, efficient, and functional in small ways that add up to a significant advantage without trying to do too much.
Now, if AS fritters those small things away with cost-cutting and SEA gets too crowded to allow an efficient operation, those advantages could go away quickly. But I personally haven't really seen that yet now that I'm based sort of in their core market. If I were still based in PHL, though, I'd probably be gone back to either AA or free agency.