Originally Posted by jerseyfinn

Might US be pursuing a strategy to be less reliant upon ( certain stratas of ) elites by rebalancing the product and cabin mix? I'm not saying that US wants elites to ditch, but is the boardroom calculus about satisfying all of your pax or simply satisfying enough elites to keep them on board with their higher revenue yield while allowing cost reductions and increased Ma and Pa Kettle volume to rush in with the tide preventing a revenue drought?

Looking at it this way might explain consistently strong earnings while the product languishes. It may not be about being "the best" as much as it's about being "good enough" to get by. So they shed lots of elites and replace a portion of them with elites who have different goals/expectations. Certainly explains why Tempe sometimes looks like underachievers. In any case, those benchmark "pacing rates" are most likely real and are based on growth from a lower aggregate base of elites. So a modest increase ends up looking like a nice % gain.