Your moderator will be mostly offline until 8/21. Sorry about not giving proper notice. I've been having a wonderful time in the wilds of southern France. Good thing I'm finally pretty fluent. Sometimes I have dial-up, on which FT is impractically slow. Other times, like the last 4 days, I have no access at all. But believe me that 4-day period was worth the price of admission.

Thanks for getting Randy to handle that immoderate post that 3 people reported to me, and sorry about the incorrect prediction on schedule extension. Next week is it, I guess. Probably Thursday AM as usual, but perhaps Wednesday. Either way, I can't do anything about that until I get back Saturday.

Sorry I can't be more active in the discussion of the changes (21 pages and I missed it!), which we expected sooner or later as some sort of package deal. The absence of capacity controls was unnecessarily generous relative to the competition. This change is simply good business, I suppose, but that doesn't make it much more palatable.

Can somebody post a link to the math I did on a few months ago on what RR awards without capacity controls cost Southwest at 2x, 1.5x, and 1x credit? I'd like to see some serious refinement of my guesses, but I'm confident that WN has run the numbers on this.

I am happy at least to see that WN has learned its lesson about announcing adverse changes prominently and well in advance. Six months is a reasonable lead time for this devaluation. I was perhaps the squeakiest wheel on this issue and on the need for an increase in the earning time limit.

Anyone want to guess when change fees will be added? That's about the only major devaluation left undone.

On the issue of standby award travel: that would be unworkable. Can you imagine the lines of RR holders on the day before Thanksgiving? It would be a nightmare for the gate agents.

I'll finish my comments on the changes with one constructive suggestion (apologies if this has already been posted): If WN guarantees a specific minimum number of award seats available on every flight or perhaps on 95% of all flights, that will go a long. long way towards assuring FTers that RR will not become another OnePass. After all, FTers have had the inside track on schedule extensions for years. One way or another, we need assurance that our awards will be highly usable, not like other carriers' 25k awards.


Now I need to chastise several FTers who have apparently managed to run off a polite and cogent SW employee, PT737SWA. Shame on you. Shame. I would trade ten of you for one of him. Sure, most of us have a customers' perspective, but we can all benefit from hearing the perspective of an employee, especially when it is presented so objectively and non-argumentatively. You would do well to emulate his style.

I urge anyone who criticized or was less than 100% polite to PT737SWA to send him a PM inviting him back. If you don't feel like it, please do it anyway as a favor to me. The forum will benefit, I assure you.