eponymous_coward

sfozrhfco

I think this will be management's excuse for Q3. Just look at SFO-JFK/EWR for tonight. One seat taken in F to EWR and 2 to JFK. Meanwhile both B6 redeyes are sold out in Mint, 3 UA flights to EWR are sold out in business, AA business is sold out, DL's 1st red eye is sold out. With just a couple hours left until flight time, has AS completely lost all their elites from SFO or is revenue management completely messed up and just leaving the F cabins empty on a prime flight in the middle of the summer? LAX is not that much better either. Tonight's flight to BOS has zero F seats booked. Getting really hard to believe AS management's story that lower revenue from award booking hurts earnings when now they are flying empty F cabins. Who in their right mind would pay $1999 to fly on AS SFO to JFK which is the price they are offering? Some revenue > no revenue. Thus they either need to offer a fare people will be willing to pay, up the product to meet the price, or give the seats away for upgrades and awards to keep loyal passengers happy. At this point, they have chosen none of the above for the transcon F seats from California.

NWplatinum

mczlaw

Clarification? Are you saying the seats are going out empty? Or are they upgrading gateside? If the latter, isn't AS is (sort of) rewarding loyalty, but just making elites sweat it out while AS attempts lamely to squeeze every last drop of revenue out of the F cabin? (BTW, wasn't this kind of bean counting shenanigans what many pundits predicted when they elevated Tilden to CEO?) I read the transcript of the Q2 earnings call and was struck with the extent to which AS is now pandering to the Wall Street crowd relative to restricting saver award inventory (not to mention the other "enhancements" adopted by AS in recent years).

sfozrhfco

If there were ever a domestic flight where a premium seat should be in demand, it would be on an overnight flight as otherwise, it can be quite a miserable experience. If the flight is leaving in less than 2 hours and zero F seats are sold and nobody has been upgraded, that would mean that nobody got upgraded or bought an F ticket in advance. Who knows if at the gate some people were given last minute upgrades but if the cabin is empty and there are high level elites booked, would it really be necessary to wait until right before flight time? Will be interesting to see the current and next quarters financial results with the raising of close in F award seats to ridiculous point levels. I would expect it would do more to drive people to other carriers than to get people to use up 70,000 points one way to get to from one coast to the other.

mczlaw

Agree with this. But obviously AS does not...and I'd conjecture that the decision to do it this way is being made above the level of the revenue managers. Once again reflecting on the Q2 earnings call, I'd suggest that:
(1) It's all about enhancing shareholder value, meaning growth of top and bottom lines.
(2) Satisfaction of elites is primarily a marketing problem. It's not something that's likely to percolate to the top unless traditional measures of financial success turn down. As Q2 illustrates, concerns in the executive suite focus on reducing giveaways, not providing more.
(3) The big wigs also know that complaining elites don't have much in the way of realistic alternatives. Sure, you can cherry pick a route here or there on which you can choose another carrier, but in terms of an airline that consistently rewards loyalty in a meaningful way, does one exist any more?

NWplatinum

NWplatinum

channa

Redeeming miles on partners is likely more costly for them than redeeming on home metal. The $25 partner booking fee doesn't come close to their costs, I would imagine. If people book more domestic/Mexico/Hawaii awards on AA as a result of this, and/or fewer connecting legs on AS, that could theoretically hurt AS in the pocketbook.

I agree they're probably just following orders from the top. Their revenue management doesn't seem to make a lot of sense in many cases. It seems they have little ability to predict what's going to happen, so they don't know how to release correctly.

I had a SFO-ORD-Europe award in J. SFO-ORD was in Y (W) on a VX 320, everything else was in J. A week before the flight, the A320 is showing F7 with all 8 seats unassigned. U is 0 the whole time, A never was released. 2 hours and 1 minute before departure, same condition. F7 U0, all 8 seats unassigned. At the 2-hour mark, they dump the whole cabin to upgrades. Yes, 8 upgrades including us.

Sure it worked out in the end, but dumping an entire cabin like that shows they really have no clue about what's going on and likely left money on the table.

The other part it's not clear they realize is that by at least having U ahead of time, it encourages people to buy up. I had a recent NYC transcon where I was on a $129 or so cheapie. Saw the U open up and I up-fared to K + GGU. I have paid up many times because of the availability of upgrade space.

CDKing

If its 12.5K or less saver is available. The cheaper awards are not available because they have advance purchase restriction, further out they need not only W award space but revenue buckets R/G/T to become available. If its over 12.5K there is no saver W at all. Here is example (and shockingly has saver space the day of a 3 day holiday):

NWplatinum

NWplatinum

StrandedinLA

The bean counting as AS within the past year has gotten absurd. I used to book direct with AS and never even price compare.

No more. Throwing out all the good from their award program and the silly 60 day change....congrats you're now any other airline!

Half of my upcoming travel is now on Delta. Good luck to you Alaska. Poor job throwing billions at Virgin America only to dispose of it.

NWplatinum

abcx

I find AS award space a bit bizarre. I know summer is peak season to HI but they are selling $184 one way saver fares on OAK-LIH in May but don't have any saver award space open. Zero! On both AS and through AA.com on AS. (Yes, I know AA just gets access to saver award space on AS but mentioning it as it seems there are some posts about how AS is upcharging for close-in award bookings while still passing on saver space to partners.)