<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by FT wannabe:
If $15000 were to spend on 75 $200 C-C RT, then USAir might have said "Screw them, we can't profit from these people anyway."
</font>
But US can profit from a $200 fare. So do your heros at SW and so forth.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Since with the 75 RT, you will earn 750,000 (2x bonus, 2x 2500 distance) miles along with your flights.</font>
Where does 2,500 miles come from? Most of US' traffic is short haul east coast stuff...
But at any rate 75 trips probably only bag me 150,000 miles -- not 750,000. Maybe 250,000 if the bonus environment is "rich".
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">750000 means a lot of free seats promised in the future, and potentially lost revenue.</font>
Perhaps you've missed it -- US' load factor is around 75% -- paying customers are not being displaced by "free trips." No revenue is "lost" when someone redeems an award.
<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">One thing that most people on FlyerTalk overlooked is what is coming next? I have to say reduced capacity. Who knows how small USAir need to be in order to survive. When the supply meet demand, that'll be the time tix price will rise.</font>
There you go again advocating a rise in ticket prices -- I thought your interest was in attractive fares?
Ticket prices are on a one way road -- and it isn't higher. The sooner the majors come to terms with that and rationalize their fare structures and start focusing on the value that customers expect in exchange for their money the sooner they'll become profitable. They'll discover that business travelers are not the same as leisure travelers (even when they're traveling on leisure) and that policies designed to treat business travelers like leisure travelers won't work.