superangrypenguin

I'll focus on the "well most" part Maradori. Hence my wish for a revenue based spend frequent flier program

PLeblond

I couldn't disagree more. But I also know that anything more I can say will not change anyone's mind.

I also know most won't agree with me so here, so I'll let it go let you all commiserate among yourselves.

Enjoy. Goodnight.

superangrypenguin

Agree to disagree. Night bud. In the morning though, please help me understand why I'm wrong. How does the lifetime value of a SE member not exceed that of a non SE? If you're spending a ton of money in paid J, surely you'd have status?

PS As many before have called me an apologist, my defense to that was that I simply use logic. I'm really trying to be logical here.

YXUhomebase

Excellent summary of the whole debacle with changes.
AC is now saying your loyalty is not worth anything to us anymore because we are doing okay now.

24left

That is EXACTLY what many longtime and loyal AC fliers feel.
Somewhere in another thread, someone said "wait until the next recession"

YXUhomebase

But i am still perplexed why AC has not gone to a strict revenue model like others. Instead they use a "modified" one which allows many to still play games to maximize AQM by minimizing cost.
eg Tango flyer earns 1/4 of the AQM at 1/2 the price of a Flex.

YXUhomebase

final comment, this one on the boarding zones.

Personally as a SE for a number of years I disagree with the placement of those needing extra time or young children (under age of five).

They should be zone 0 (ahead of zone 1).

I have never understood why we would not give those who have difficulty or have young children the extra time to board and get settled.

Any chance AC will not reconsider that? (it is how it used to be and i always thought it should AC had a heart for the struggling traveler)

superangrypenguin

+1. The thought of SE's/J having to see/watch travelers who need help is just causing awkwardness...my wife has severe medical problems, and I have some too (not as bad, I look normal). I would like us to have as much privacy as possible.

24left

YXUhomebase -
It's a good question, but I don't know if there is a right answer to when to board those needing extra time.

Here's what I have observed and this is most especially challenging with the narrowbodies. Most of my flights this year were 320/321 trans-border. All of the flights (no matter which time of day) were full. All flights had various numbers of young families and a couple of people in wheelchairs.

Sometimes the young families boarded early and when the rest of the boarding started, some of the kids/ parents who had pre-boarded, were not yet seated or had items stored. No one else could get down the aisle.

Here was the sad part: We are all seated. 2 airport employees then use a slimline wheelchair to bring a pax onboard. These are not full-size chairs as you may know. No matter, the 2 guys struggled to get the pax and the chair past the bulge at row 12 and down the aisle.

I don't know what the answer is.

There are all kinds of systems/strategies used by airlines for boarding.
Scientists or others come up with theories on optimal methods (one study says free-for-all is fastest, which of course would be mayhem).

I think zonal boarding is just another version of royalty vs peasant, just the chess pieces on the board have be re-arranged.

Geoflying

I am totally in agreement here. It seems to me that any J or SE or *G flyer that thinks they are more important than someone who has a real need for some consideration is simply full of hubris. I have had priority boarding privileges for many years now but I always give way to families with kids or people with a cane or some other evident (or even non evident) reason to be given some consideration in the boarding process - and it really, really annoys me when people with an over inflated sense of self importance express annoyance (or do worse things best left to the imagination) to those less fortunate than themselves.

CanadaDH

While I can see the logic in some of the arguments that a SE has more lifetime value than an individual high-spending but occasional J purchaser, that argument assumes that we are only comparing 2 individuals--Mr. SE and Mr. J$. However, what if there are several Mr. J$s in the customer base for every SE? I don't work for AC, so I don't have a clue how many passengers fall into each camp, but if the number of people paying for J outnumber the SEs in J, I can see why a business would want to cater to Mr. J$ just as much as Mr. SE. It's not necessarily the value than an individual passenger brings, but you have to consider the value that a group of passengers bring.

As to why should the J purchasers get to board first along with other priority customers? It's because it's advertised as part of the service offering of paid J. Perhaps AC considers it a benefit that people like Mr. J$ demand, and so they offer it so as not to lose this customer segment.

24left

Here is one thing that zone boarding will not fix: families that are separated in their seating.

The usual situation is one parent sits with one child in one locations, the other parent is elsewhere in the cabin with the other child or children.

All of them are upset that they can't sit together. I asked agents about this and the answer was: AC cannot guarantee that they will all be together on tickets where they do not pay for their seats but wait for check-in.

On two of my LAX flights, I gave my paid seats to a young moms with an infants. I chose to do so and ended up on one occasion in the row in front of the lavs. It was fine and no one else was there, so I had 3 seats.

My point: I have seen some frustrated families and FAs try to play musical seats during boarding to try and get the family members together or at least closer.

I am sure I'm not the only one who has done so, but the question remains, whether we board by status or by zone or by credit card or some combination of these, the boarding process is not always smooth and no one has figured out how to resolve these issues as well as the challenge with wheelchairs and walkers on some of the aircraft.

Stranger

Sorry, but I have no sympathy about tihs. If these families are unwilling to pay for seat assignment, surely they are willing to seat away from each other?

I would not change seats to accommodate them if that would entail sitting at some location worse than where I am.

Bottom line, people should get what they pauid for. Or pay for what they want. Putting presure on others because they were cheap is not something to let oneself be manipulated into.

Stranger

Agreed. As long as the kids are really small kids. And the family is a nuclear family, not 10 or 15 people.

24left

I did not say I have sympathy for them, just that the problem exists regardless of how pax board planes.

I actually watched a family argue with a FA about why they were separated and why other pax wouldn't move to accommodate them. The FA said, these pax paid for their seats. If you all want to sit together, then you have to pay as well.

This is the type of pax AC wants to fill their planes with. They want to take the kids to Disney and not pay extra for the things that now cost extra because pax want cheap seats.