Originally Posted by
npretnar
I think that subsidizing your operations which lose money by profiting off of consumers who use your credit card with the promise of being able to 1) receive loyalty benefits; 2) use miles for various travel is not a sustainable long run profitability strategy. As loyalty benefits from spend become more difficult to use and (heaven forbid) AA ever massively devalues awards a la UA and DL, the value proposition of using the card to consumers on the margin also declines until the opportunity cost of switching to non-airline CCs is low enough that they forego airline CC utilization.
I mean, who else are you going to buy from for US domestic flights other than our current US carriers……
There is just not that much competition/choices out there than what we see with the US airline loyalty model/choice..
Majority of people aren’t flying for the loyalty perks, rather to just get from point A
to B; the loyalty program is a just a rebate program on your spend….icing on the cake if you will. FT is not the norm, in that people put so much value on the icing, they forget about the cake….