bigbirdwithsilverwings

For me, the sole motivation of having 4 Alaska branded VISA accounts and paying the $75 per account annual fee way the companion certificate, and more specifically, the ability to use it to buy first class seats. That change alone is a big enough deal for me to give up all 4 cards. I can get 1.25 Alaska miles for every dollar I spend on my Starwood Preferred AmEx which has a $65/year annual fee (not to mention much better convertibility to about 30 airlines and hundreds if not thousands of hotels). I wonder if B of A understood that Alaska could unilaterally change the terms and conditions of the card to make these types of changes at the time they spent a kazillion dollars buying Alaska Airlines frequent flyer miles. I further wonder whether B of A will offer Alaska less $ at the time of contract renewal when it loses customers-consumer and business accounts like mine. I would guess that if Alaska loses people like me who are paying full fare first class in conjunction w/the companion certificate- completely as I will change carriers- it will result in less revenue to both B of A AND Alaska. I actually feel bad for B of A because it's going to lose a lot of business for a decision it had nothing to do with. If I were it, I'd be raising hell

johnp012001

What' AS gets from us using the card is BofA buying miles. They MIGHT also get a lower discount rate, if negotiated, with BofA, since BofA processes AS CC transactions. All of which is subject to negotiation. Additionally, they were giving the bonus to ALL AS Visa transactions, not just the marginal ones, so it's far greater than you give credit. How many people do you think will still use the card for the 3x miles without the 1K bonus? In full disclosure, I've cancelled MY card. But, outside of this forum, how many people do you really think have?

bigbirdwithsilverwings

With time, as people renew and discover their card no longer has any true value-and the benefits they have previously relied on no longer exist- I think more and more people will cancel their accounts. Hopefully, enough of a deluge of cancellations to cause BofA to tell Alaska they will pay them 10 cents on the dollar for future miles which will cause Alaska to reinstate the benefits they've stripped out of the card. Fingers crossed. I agree this will take time. However, for those canceling their cards, I think it would be a great idea to get a manager on the phone and tell them why we are canceling and get them to exert pressure on Alaska. I intend to.

sltlyamusd

Evidently, enough people were using the companion cert to fly F that it was diluting F revenues. I still think AS would find it advantageous to have seats paid for by pax traveling on Visa companion fares as opposed to just filling up more seats with free upgrades. However, I guess if they can fill up an F cabin strictly on paid fares, more power to them. Even as an AS fan, I admit that AS F is more of a business class product than a true F product and is not worth paying full price for. I was willing to pay for F with the companion fare, as it made the price "reasonable." There is no way I'm shelling out $2600 for two round-trip F tickets to Hawaii.

AS needs to do one of two things IMHO: 1) expand the F cabin (from 16 to 20 seats on the 738/739). or 2) Maintain the existing number of seats but improve the F seat legroom/comfort/recline. The food and service are OK to me, but the seating I think is the real shortfall on longer flights.

finnster

Totally agree - their seats are more like economy plus than first or business class. Very few other perks offered any more. I find it irritating that gate agents or FA's rarely enforced things like the boarding priority (crowd standing in front of boarding line makes it difficult to get to priority line) or prevent people from shouldering their way through from economy to get to the bathroom. The last 2 flights to Hawaii i actually had to stand in line, despite this being security issue. Kids messed it up and one poor confused guy fumbled around looking for the door for 5 mins and then forgot to lock it, so the next visitor from economy walked in on him. This all played out in front of the FA with no comment.

I could put up with it if using companion fare, but frankly if paying I expect much better.

Someone earlier commented along the lines that the people using companion fares for first class are more price conscious. I humbly disagree. Anyone price conscious would use companion fares for economy because that is going to be best price. People using companion fares for first must have additional means, and wouldn't you want to attract these purchasers? It certainly meant more money and full fare trips using alaska for me, just out of loyalty. Now i will switch to a different airline. For us the companion cert in first class was the only positive differentiator.

KenfromDE

As stated above, if AS can fill all the F seats at full price, they win. If not they lose our appx. $4000 per year and $ from many others. Goodbye!

sxf24

I can guarantee there none of the changes were unilateral. Every aspect of the relationship between the airline and the bank is negotiated and agreed to.

Further, no one should feel bad for BofA. The only reason they got people to sign up for these cards in the first place is because they provided a few generous benefits. BofA has to ultimately back that up with excellent service if you want to keep the customers.

dgreen12

You shouldn't be. BoA is paying an agreed upon price for the miles to AS to buy the miles that they give out.

AS is giving out miles that have an extremely low cost to them --- the pro-rata share of the marginal cost of providing the services once the miles are redeemed. There is no out of pocket cash cost to AS to provide those miles.

The 1,000 bonus miles have a good perceived value to the consumer, but the marginal cost to provide them to the consumer is very, very low.

BoA's purchased miles, however, are real cash to the airline. Probably a great negotiated rate (see, e.g., Delta and Amex discussions elsewhere), but a money-maker nonetheless.

sxf24

You're correct that there is no cash cost for AS to give away miles. However, the magnitude of impact on the P&L for miles sold and miles given away is the same.

ExecTraveler

I have better odds of being able to use 25K miles for a one-way F ticket to Orlando before Thanksgiving than in getting excellent customer service from BoA.

In fact, I have better odds of getting a smile out of a US Airways agent than getting even good customer service from BoA...but just barely.

convert

I hate to say this, but i have always felt the companion ticket in F was overly generous. Many of my friends and I are professionals that do not fly for business. I get my status on another airline because of long international flights and we rarely fly AS. We all have the AS card for our yearly trip to Hawaii on first during the winter. While, I hate to lose the benefit, i wouldn't be surprised that there are many people like us

ChugiakAk

Yet others fall into the category of supporting Alaska Airlines over the years (since 1972 for me) who stick with them through thick and thin even though other choices are there (increasingly hard to find alternatives in Anchorage).

I see the companion fare change as another example of the "chip away" effect that has become dominant over the past several years. It's as though Alaska really doesn't care anymore what we think. Let's see what we can get away with this time. After all, it's not about our customers, it's about way to cut something else and convince people it's really in their best interest.

Eujeanie

Sorry if this is a stupid question, I'm new to this companion fare thing.

Say you saved your last companion F fare certificate, and just had it sitting in your account. Then you got your next new Y only companion certificate. Can you choose which one you use for a flight, or does it somehow make you use the one with the earliest expiration date first?

beckoa

Wirelessly posted (beckoa's PWP wondrousdevice3.0: Mozilla/5.0 (BlackBerry; U; BlackBerry 9810; en-US) AppleWebKit/534.11+ (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/7.0.0.583 Mobile Safari/534.11+)

I imagine it would make a difference which one you used...

thumbelina

upgraded elites

I repost my previous reply to this thread:

suggestion--MIGHT SUIT BEANCOUNTERS AND PASSENGERS

what if holders of the alaska visa who are also MVPG could use companion pass for F and those with lower status could not? They could offer MVPs something better than just coach ie instantly upgradeable U class on certain fare bases for their companion tickets. Those without status could redeem for coach or for an upgrade eligible fare if bought in a high enough fare basis '

THE LATTER TWO CASES ARE ALREADY THE CASE, IT IS JUST A QUESTION OF WHICH FARE BASES WOULD BE UPGRADEABLE AND WHETHER INSTANTLY OR ONLY 24 HRS BEFORE OR ON DAY OF....