100,000miler

Had dinner last night with another SE who recently had dinner with our Mr. Milton. Apparently he is dining with the high yielding customers but certainly not with all SEs.

One of his points was that he get ZERO complaints of Tango, but of course boxes full on the main line. Sounds like a conspiracy against frequent flyers to me!!

The main line sets "us" up with expectations that often cannot be met, whereas no frills, creates an environment of NO expectations. This is a no win senario, but what I fear is that with the restructuring of UAL, many of the incentives to be a frequent flyer might be curtailed. There are many threads on this on the UA portion of FT such as the possibility of doing away with upgrades all together.

Should that ever happen, I am gone as a loyal AC customer. I will curtail my travel dramatically and start buying the lowest fares available with no expectations at all. I do not think this is what AC would want as now it gets a lot of higher fares from me such as H and above for upgrade purposes. And AC has been good to me in this respect. I value loyalty and I hope my airline does too!! and will continue to in the future. Otherwise I am gone!

Shareholder

Well, the USA is still a competitive marketplace and we saw the response the US Air announced it would remove status credit from restricted fare tickets. Loyal FFers made it very clear they would march en masse to the competition. [US assumed the competition would join them in this little bit of innovative "tough love", but that did not happen.] US execs backed down very quickly. UA would not commit a similar form of hari kari at this time when it needs its most frequent customers most, so I would not give much credence to a lot of the rumours being posted on that forum. UA may tighten up on upgrades, but I suspect most carriers down there will be doing this. Though this is not all that needed, since all have been reducing capacity in the front cabins, so there are less seats to upgrade to. Most will likely follow AC's approach and raise the bar on eligible fares, thus ensuring a few more dollars of revenue from each upgrading elite.

brm744

Nothing to do with whatever was said above, but here's my complaints on Tango, Bob:

1. It sucks

2. The Toronto T3 Satellite Terminal? It's a several mile walk. Yeah thanks...I think I'd rather walk to Calgary. That's just one of the dozens of reasons why WestJet is 10x better

3. No status miles, yet at least with Zip? Why bother then? No lounge in T3.

------
Sorry, but I've been in a real foul mood since my last Tango flight - a four hour delay caused me to miss my daughter's birthday party

[This message has been edited by brm744 (edited 12-11-2002).]

ACDUDE

Bytepusher

You really beleive that Tango will be around in 10-15 years?

Tango has done it's job, get a LCC up fast and retain market share in the east against C3000 initially and now Canjet, Jetsgo and WJ.

Once they get the kinks ironed out of Zip with a presumably lower cost structure then one of the LCC brands will go and it makes sense that it will be Tango. It may take as much as 5 years but I doubt much longer.

ACDUDE

I'm not sure about that because I don't know if I'll be around come April 2004 when our contract expires.

I'm just saying that AC planned to leave Tango in T3 as far as something like 2015 with all the projects for T1-New in YYZ.

Andrew Yiu

They were forced to give status miles for ZIP flights because those flights replace mainline while Tango compliments mainline. If they don't give Q miles for 3J, then there is no reason for people to keep on flying them.

Remember we still haven't seen Tango International yet!

Cloud Lounger

I admit that the last four segments I flew on Tango were quite fine.

1. The planes were not very full, so I had room to stretch out.

2. Crew were very friendly although bored because they got through their service in about 10 minutes.

3. No pizza meal stuck to the aluminum foil. (see number 2)

4. Departed on time, arrived on time.

5. Bags delivered quickly.

6. I am quite content to sit in Y for short haul flights. (couple of hours)

I do feel that status miles should be awarded on all flights regardless of the airline. (That whole notion of it being a frequent flier program). And unlike FF miles, Im not too fussed that there isnt lounge access for Tango in YYZ.

Shareholder

TANGO is no frills, so the less you expect the less can go wrong. On AC mainline, everyone, even in the back, expects more than they are likely to receive. Thus more complaints.

As for the remote terminal at T3, wait until AC moves its international operations into TNew and we have to endure a similar transfer to the Midfield Terminal which, as we are led to believe, will not have a MLL or much in the way of frills.

TANGO's major competition is WESTJET, CANJET and JETSGO, none of which offer even basic FF miles. Aeroplan miles are a competitive edge, even if these are not status miles. The type of traveller forming the core of TANGO's passengers do not care about status miles, just basic miles to accumulate a moderate balance in their Aeroplan accounts. Granted, a growing number of business travellers who cannot work around the advance booking and Saturday overnight requirements of AC are now flying TANGO [or WESTJET etc.] but not getting status miles is the trade-off one pays if cutting costs on travel are that essential.

ZIP is a bit of a hybrid, serving two functions where it flies. Its separateness from AC permits new contracts and lower cost operations than either mainline of even JAZZ. And because it does replace AC mainline on some key western routes, there is an onus to provide status miles, unlike the situation with TANGO. It is a response to a very unique regional marketplace. As are all of AC's alternative brands.

AC*SE

One thing that will keep Tango going is the limitations in the pilots' collective agreement on the size of the Low Cost Carrier.

ProudEdmontonian

Have you ever flown on Zip?

Unlike yourself I was actually in the Ipsos-Reid focus groups 2 summers ago when E and SE were being asked about one-class service in the Western Triangle. Not one person do I recall ever suggested that AC change into another brand name to fly here. Everyone thought the service was going to be called 'Skyrunner' or several other names put on the white board - in the same fashion as RapidAir was (in the West once upon a time) a service name.

I think people here would prefer to fly a carrier called Air Canada because there is a large amount of pride in Canada out here.

I've flown Zip once as a result of a cancellation, and on a YVR trip to get 8 segments. It's a one-class plane with 2 choices of chocolate bar (Coffee Crisp or Caramilk) or cashews for $1.00. The only Zip employees I saw or heard were on the plane. ALL OTHERS WERE AC! And, without exception, the AC ground personnel were none too happy that they had to do what they did for Zip. In other words, AC employee morale in the West is being even further eroded beyond what it is already because they can see every day in places like YEG that WestJet is getting the bulk of the market notwithstanding the recent profit warning. WestJet's success can be partially attributed to the long-standing poor service and attitude of AC in this market. The poor load factors on Zip reflect this.

Zip is not the answer. One-class service called AC might be but with an attitude adjustment. It's probably too late....





[This message has been edited by PunishedEdmontonian (edited 12-12-2002).]

Shareholder

Two years is a long time ago in the airline business. If one can't respond in 6-months, you're in trouble, as the US carriers have demonstrated. A one-class AC does not solve the labour issues, or the operating cost ones as ZIP does. Your crew may have been AC, but they transferred to ZIP after CUPE signed an agreement to get them on. Same with CAW staff at check-in, etc.

AC's only one-class services will be on CRJs which are clearly set off in the fleet and in collective agreements. Having any other aircraft configured for one-class on mainline would cause insurmountable problems, which is why it is not in the cards, and the ZIP and TANGO options adopted. CRJs don't have the capacity required on some of the ZIP routes, so keeping them in AC colours was not an option. Nor was operating them with JAZZ DASH8s or their own CRJs.

If westerners so love to be considered "Canadian" why did they not fly CP, their own full service carrier, when WestJet started its assault on its key western routes? And from what you've posted in the past, AC is beyond redemption out there, so why bother?

The BAe146 fleet will operate much like the DC9 fleet did over a decade after these aircraft were officially removed from service. Every so often, a number would rejoin the active AC fleet to infill on routes where capacity needed to be increased temporarily. Shifting BAe146s to the Yukon -- as JAZZ flights? -- provides an appropriately sized airplane for anticipated loads. It is still a marginally profitable proposition when compared with continuing the route with larger aircraft.

As for staffing numbers, this is not only a union matter, but one that the DOT and FAA establish for every size and category of airplane.

[This message has been edited by Shareholder (edited 12-13-2002).]

parnel

I AM USING jAZZ A LOT THESE DAYS WITHIN ALBERTA(over 20 segments in November alone) and they are flying with very good loads when I am on them,usually above 65-70%.Remember they still connect a lot of PAX to the mainline carrier and their pricing is good.

FlyerAl

Considering that CP was 30% (or something like that) owned by AA, WestJet is more "Canadian" than the former CP.

ProudEdmontonian

Shareholder Once again: Have you ever flown Zip?

New quesion: Do you read others' posts before you grind your axe about WestJet?

The crew was Zip. That is what is meant by "...on the plane." EVERYONE ELSE was AC in both YVR and YEG. I assume if you wear AC uniforms you are AC. In YEG, the same people who work the AC desk and gates work the Zip desk and gates.

Now regale us with how AirBC 'Super Shuttle" out of YXD initially and then YEG didn't have anything to do with CP's demise vis-a-vis the YEG-YYC run....

[This message has been edited by PunishedEdmontonian (edited 12-12-2002).]