I'm still not sure if this gets me back on a US plane anytime in the future. Once bitten twice shy as they say.

You can't really show such an ugly hand and then decide to pull it back and hope that all will be forgiven and forgotten. Truth is that they showed their INTENTION and they will just find another way to screw us over again.

I'll give you my prediction. Can you see a major restriction on available award seats and/or the massive increase in the number of miles needed to make award travel? A reduction in the number BONUS miles offered to SP, GP, and CP? I say since they can't eliminate our miles/perks straight up they will just continually try to sneak through some other avenue over and over until they gradually succeed.

Also, did you pick up on the verbiage. BASE miles will continue to count toward perferred status. Thats a hell of a lot of 150 mile shuttle flights to get to 100,000.

I'm still perplexed about his continued insistance that somehow biz travelers are OBLIGATED to pay more for their flights than leisure travelers? What gives? What mandates that a biz traveler should get gouged just because they are traveling for business? It is a body in a seat, period. Forget about biz travel versus leisure travel, your just another passenger on the plane. Whether your wearing a tank-top and shorts or a 3 piece suite, the price should be the same. When are they going to get it beat through thier thick skulls that businesses and their travelers DON'T NEED the airlines. This isn't 1960 for Christ's sake and frankly business travel is almost a dinosaur as it is.

It is as if you wanted to go buy a new truck at the local Ford/GM/Dodge dealer and the salesman says "Well, if you just want it to cruise around in then the cost is $20,000 but if you going to haul things in it and use it for business purposes then the cost will be $80,000".

I guess confessing and re-confessing that the only true intention is to continually try to price gouge the biz traveler just makes me a little bit ill. What other industry tries this or has the audacity to think that the customer OWES them something extra. Why don't they just FORGET IT and move on with salary cuts for the $300,000 per year part-time pilots and the $90,000 per year wrench twisters and , of course, the multi-million dollar execs? Instead they are worried about full cans of pepsi and plastic knives which couldn't be a drop in the ocean of costs that they have.

Hey call me irate, crazy, or paranoid but you just remember one simple rule. "Fool me once shame on you , fool me twice shame on me". These A-holes will try something else underhanded for sure...and it won't be long before they do it.

Did you notice that the stand-by policy reversal has ambiguous "restrictions". Nice to not reveal all of the details when you have the opportunity. Just another smoke-and-mirrors trick to make you feel better until you get fried on a technicality. I really don't care either, I'm not paying a $100 to fly stand-by when they don't incurr 10 cents of cost to do let me go home earlier or later. They only win from the proposition.

The fact is that they were struggling BEFORE making these stupid policy changes. Now all of the sudden they want us to feel "Better" and at peace with paying $100 for stand-by. This is typical marketing (albeit HIGH RISK marketing) ploy. Gives us the worst news and then back it off a bit and hope that somehow it feels better and we feel like we have won something back.

I'll sit on the sidelines and watch for a little while longer and give my $$ to a different airline or simply drive.

Good Luck guys and gals, you'll need it with this airline. This all a bunch of BS, there is something more sinister brewing at the Crystal City, they aren't done yet, this is just buying time for them until they can think up a new scheme.

[This message has been edited by marcuspratt (edited 09-06-2002).]