I completely understand why CO is doing what it is doing across the board. Revenue enhancement is the primary goal at the moment both in the short term and on the long term. It might even be a survival issue and not greed as some have suggested.

The fairly recent set of strategies is going to affect a segment of their customers that regardless of how much they fly are not the ones targetted as the ones to best satisfy CO's revenue needs (for example, 75K/year W and T fare only fliers). They need to encourage high-fare paying customers to fly and continue to fly CO.

One way to do this is to give them perks (regardless of their mileage history) when they pay more (and not just full fare). If I was in their shoes, I would look at the Elite upgrade list and order them based on fares paid. I would release seats into F's only to accommodate the top 2 or 3 fare categories and hold on to others (why upgrade T fares for example) until higher fare elites came in. If there were none at boarding time, I would provide some discretion to the gate attendants to reward "good" prospects for future flights. They can do this without changing the "program rules". Of course, this goes counter to the spirit of EUA but desperate times call for desperate measures.

I think the only thing objectionable in CO's strategies so far, and what made me give up on CO last year, is one of "false advertising". While they carry out the strategy to maximize revenue that is bound to piss people off, they want to keep those people in CO with what amounts to deceptive advertising in my books. It is perhaps this that irritates people like NJDavid.

Reminds me of Ford Motor Co. in the late 80s when it was reeling from the quality issues compared to imports. At first, marketing tried to solve the problem with "Quality is Job 1" slogans. If enough people believed it and bought into it, it wouldn't really be necessary to spend money improve quality or improve it slowly. The people that were already sympathetic to Ford wouldn't desert in numbers due to existing sentiments atthe time.

CO is doing a similar delicate balancing act. I will be watching with amusement at the result. Meanwhile, some other carrier better serves my needs. No need to get bitter about any of these things.

If they win the Freddies this year, it will be a marketing triumph but not a deserved win, in my opinion.