In reference to our recent discussions on the new Automatic Elite Upgrades, and why I am so opposed to them, so opposed to the royal shafting it will give gold and silver elites, and generally opposed to anything that messes with a plan that is working (as I've said, the mantra is if it ain't broke, don't fix it!, I offer the following:


On December 6, 1999 Gordon Bethune gave a speech at the Quality New Jersey Meeting & Award Ceremony sponsored by the Chamber of Commerce in Morris County, New Jersey.

The following are excerpts from the exact text of his presentation. He knows that messing with the best rated frequent flyer program is wrong.

"We actually had been experimenting with a Continental Lite, which was an airline with-in an airline that didn't have first class seats and no food. And we had a bunch of people who were upset with us and didn't know what kind of service to expect and was [sic] almost uniformly disappointed..."

"And so we just decided rather than hire Bain & Company why don't we just put things back the way there were."

"We had an award winning frequent flyer program. For years we had been the best frequent flyer program in America, until the lawyers and accountants fixed it. And we dropped to the bottom.... why don't we just put it back and we did. We restored the frequent flyer program to exactly same specifications that had been award winning, wrote all of our customers a letter of apology, and invited 60 of our
best customers to my house to announce the fact that we had listened and had put it back an apologized for our behavior."

"We started putting Continental product back to where it had been in the places where it could make some money and today 'Fly To Win' works for us, and as was mentioned we we've won the J. D. Power & Associates award for the last three out of four years."


This is a smart man. I wonder why he's letting the lawyers and accountants get away with it again.

I don't know if I can legally distribute copies of the tape, but it was recorded at a public forum, so I certainly don't have a care about telling about it.

Mr. Bethune? Mr. Brenneman?, Mr. Bergsrud? Do you care to comment on why this hard learned lesson is being ignored?



[This message has been edited by NJDavid (edited 11-03-2000).]