It appears that my reply last night never did post, so sorry if it ends up showing up later!

Don't confuse a drop in passengers overall with a drop in load factor. The airlines are furiously cutting available seat miles, to try to compensate for the overall loss of pax.

If passenger traffic falls by 30%, then first class seats available in the system should also fall by 30%. That means more elites = more competition.

That's why I didn't compare 2002 to 2001, just 2002 w/Holdover and 2002 w/o. It's the only stable comparison.