Originally Posted by
notquiteaff
While I suspect this experiment will not be very successful and thus end or change significantly, it is interesting for a (Russian speaking) FTer to study. And I definitely prefer that they experiment with this type of “loyalty” scheme than with the MileagePlan scheme I like and use

Yes, that’s the thing. It’s clearly a niche product. For those of us for whom this product doesn’t make sense, there’s no harm to us and no reason for Alaska to be particularly bothered. Even if this isn’t widely adopted, I can see it being good for a small set of customers and also good for Alaska selling to those customers (since it guarantees them revenue, likely at the expense of WN in many cases). And if it gets additional traffic from WN onto short haul CA routes, maybe that will push a few routes to higher frequencies or just push marginal routes to exist at all, benefitting the rest of us. I don’t see this product needing to be widely adopted to stick around.