Agreed...and to take it one step further....

The carrier's positioning is a mess and their pricing is, at best, silly, at worst, damaging and completely "business unfriendly."

POSITIONING - This is how you set your product up to your customer. Right now, US is set up as an LCC, low fare carrier with the bells and whistles of a traditional legacy carrier. TIMEOUT! Where are the bells and whistles? The F-Class product is WORSE, by a great deal, then even UA Express. The airplanes are filthy and the dependability is nill.

PRICING - Pricing on this carrier is both (a.) as high or higher then the competition and (b.) a real shell game. That translates to VERY confusing. Part of the genius of WN is the fact that the pricing is crazily transparent...and that empowers a consumer to feel "qualified" to know what they are buying and make their own determination on value. A HUGE, necessary component in gaining "adoption" in the marketing cycle. As BoeingBoy and I discussed and I think he discovered and pointed it out to me, CO is clearly trying to follow a pattern that is easy(er) to understand. And indeed, when you buy their product, they essentially have 2 prices, each cabin. Of course, they probably sell inventory to consolidators and let the consolidators play the shell game.

Additionally, for pricing...the business traveler notoriously needs some flexibility. This business traveler frequently finds his plans change. US prices that are competitive are nearly all non-refundable. Take for example, purchasing an F-Class ticket on US from PVD-SFO....$769...NON REFUNDABLE, NON-CHANGEABLE. That's not consistent at all with the competition. In fact, I don't know of another carrier offering non-refundable prices at that level.

Next, Y fares or full coach....nearly ALWAYS $200 (for trans-con anyway) over the competition. For example, I'm CP on US (soon to be a former CP) and PE on CO. CO's Y fare coast to coast is $700....US is $949. I can get the "instant upgrade" on either carrier....why would I pay $250 more....to get plastic cup, plastic cutlery and a paper napkin? If I'm upgraded off a $200 ticket, fine...but to pay the money and get a product SIGNIFICANTLY worse then others flying the route? Makes ZERO sense.

I fly in Envoy next week to BCN...and I know I'm going to be shaking my head as I receive my meal....supposing the ovens actually work....as I unroll my plastic cutlery from the paper napkin...I'll be shaking my head, wondering why I laid out the $6,000 to take the trip on US when I could have flown DL....