Dear ContinentalFan,

I closely read your story/rant. Very thorough, and again, I thought a very fair and balanced assessment of your problems. This wasn't one of those stories in the category of "I once had a terrible experience with a f/a and so I'm never flying that airline again."

I thought about how much you have put into your relationship with CO and how much less you are getting out of it than you did just a year ago. As you know, that is also my issue with CO, although I must say I am frankly a little humbled, and don't feel that my stories come anywhere close to the depth of issues that you have with CO, mainly because I rarely ever went out of my way to buy anything but the cheapest ticket (I did buy tickets that were more expensive on CO than on competitors, but I only bought H when that was the least expensive option on CO).

I think your story is a parable of the current state of OnePass. The bottom line is that, at least right now, OnePass is obviously not important to CO. They want to make money selling seats, not by fostering loyalty.

So that's their strategy.

The sad thing is they have lost a hugely valuable customer such as yourself willing to buy Y tickets for $3,500 when it is possible (at times) to buy Z for as little as $1700 r.t.

One thing that does trouble me a little bit is your choice of AA. If you've ranked UA as a D- I'm afraid you may find AA a quite a bit below your standards.

Now, as I've written before, I haven't flown AA in quite some time (this predates AA's acquisition of TWA and has nothing to do with that). But all of the grievances that you have against CO are precisely in the mould of how AA conducts its business.

I know that the old days of AA's swagger and infinite arrogance are gone. But reports from my friends (longtime AA ff's) are that customer service there has fallen to an absolute low. And anyone who flew AA in the old days (I flew over 800,000 miles on AA) knows that AA's idea of customer service is to accuse you of obnoxious behavior and then charge you a fee for it, or simply to call the cops.

I hope that this has changed there; again I'm curious to hear your reactions to flying on AA. If you like it, I will start flying them again.

Bon voyage!