Disgruntled AS Employees: "It's a race to the bottom."
 

I've already secured my DL status match from 75K to Platinum and will be flying them exclusively for the next few months. I've noticed that DL pilots apologize profusely if they're even slightly late, and the idea of disgruntled AS pilots deliberately dragging their heels makes my blood boil. Also, the FA's are never stingy with the Biscoffs. Who else is jumping ship in the near-term?

https://www.seattletimes.com/business/boeing-aerospace/as-alaska-air-cuts-costs-employee-discontent-grows-and-passenger-loyalty-is-at-risk/

Sounds like my Boss is moonlighting at Alaska

Its the US Airways nut mix all over again.

I'm more concerned to learn Delta ramped up from 3 routes to 59 routes from SEA in five years. What happens if they keep expanding and get up to 100 routes in another year or two? Is it possible that Delta could become the new dominant carrier for Seattle? If they continue to increase market share at this rate, long-term it could mean less Alaska aircraft and less Alaska employees working out of SEA.

I wonder if the 'young FA' is familiar with the bottom, with experience on Spirit, Frontier, or Northwest circa 2005 after it removed the blankets, pillows, magazines, Spinzels, and what little domestic IFE had been offered. Maybe not, but criticizing service standards and management direction in public doesn't serve the company.

https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/nort...ml#post4114924

Granted DL gold via AS gold. Enough booked for next three months to lock that in for the year.

I'd already been planning on matching over to DL Silver in the summer because it'll be easier for me to maintain status with them. I'd been a little disappointed because I knew I'd be dealing with worse customer service and more potential for operational hiccups... but apparently the employee morale problems are narrowing the gap in both departments.

SEA is my base. I had a terrible experience with an AS supervisor at SEA last year. They broke our bag between SJD and LAX last year; though I escalated at LAX, they directed us to escalate at SEA. The supervisor at SEA accused me and my wife of breaking it and displayed condescending behavior. She flat out lied to us that AS did not fix bags and that it was on us to get it done and she would just give us some miles or something like that. I had to escalate to her supervisor and one step further who apologized and confirmed that they did, indeed, direct-repair bags with their service provider.

Delta? I stupidly misread my flight itinerary one time at SEA and I ran to my gate to a closed door. One thousand % my fault. But I guess the boarding door was still open. The red coat agent asked me by name, then reopened the door, and removed the non-rev in my seat to let me fly. The FAs were clearly unhappy with the delay but did they give me an unforgettable customer experience that day. A couple of months later, the United-Dao incident happened which made me even more grateful for her/Delta's commitment to their customers.

Yep, Delta has failed me on a few occasions in the past. But every time, they've taken care of me. They will continue to get my business; AS gave me 75k match for my DL Plat but the grass looks pretty yellow from my seat on Delta's side.

I've been an MVP for just over two years now, and AS has treated me very well, especially reservation agents--I've even gotten a couple of unexpected upgrades after calling in to fix itineraries with schedule changes. So far I've only flown three trips with DL, and other than one less-than-great interaction with a PDX check-in agent (which happened to be my first-ever interaction with a DL employee), the service I've received has been perfectly fine but not exceptional. I brought up operational issues because AS has had the best mainline on-time performance for several years running (although having an SFO hub is definitely going to tank that stat), while DL does the best of the big three but occasionally has meltdowns because something's wrong at ATL and the rest of their network is tied in so strongly with that airport.

My experiences may be considered even more anecdotal than normal because I'm an MVP who only flew roughly 11k miles on AS last year, with most of my EQMs coming from international travel on partners (hence the move to DL).DL would probably love to, but SEA just doesn't have the space right now. They're upgauging existing service where they can, but the terminal expansions are going to have to finish before they try to add too many more destinations.
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Sounds like another Jeff Smisek clone is running AS.

not possible, DL is gate constrained in Seattle. They simply cannot grow enough to overtake AS. And I'm willing to bet DL operation in Seattle is no where close to as profitable as AS is. However, it will make AS less profitable in Seattle.

AS faces some real challenges this next year:
1) DL invading it's home turf and really cutting into AS bottom line
2) Horizon mess and challenges with that + VX integration issues
3) HA finally getting the right aircraft A321NEO for some of the thinner routes to Hawaii, which will now be able to give real competition and hurt AS yield to secondary Hawaiian islands
4) WN entering Hawaii and laser focusing on AS in California market.
5) UA adding pressure on VX at SFO
6) Mint just killing old VX transcon network

All of which are problems, but for some reason AS just refuses to admit it has a real problem in transcon market against mint pressure. If they tell investors that RASM will drop 4% this year vs last year and cost will go up 5%, that's a huge problem. If you noticed recently, the other airlines are mostly reporting improved revenue conditions. UA might be the only other one reporting RASM drops. And the big issue in AS route network are obviously the old VX networks, which simply crumbled after mint entered their most profitable markets.

Notice how this 4% RASM drop has happened before 3) and 4) have really even taken place. Those are expected next year. 4) will probably have the largest impact, but I think 3) will hurt more than people think. The rest of them are also expected to be bigger problems next year. DL is only gaining strength in Seattle. UA is steadily adding capacity at SFO and those new VX routes out of SFO are not profitable at all. Mint is going to hit AS core trancon markets of BOS/JFK-SEA after already putting pressure on EWR/BOS-SAN. Long term, I don't see AS sticking around on BOS-SAN and JFK-LAS.

Honestly, if DL becomes the dominant carrier at SEA, it will likely be because they end up offering a more competitive product, either on price, service, network, or all three. Why would that be a bad thing?

Things that would make this MVPG a disgruntled passenger: Pilots deliberately slowing things down out of spite.

Things that would not: Fewer Biscoffs.

I dunno, maybe it's being an east coast and midwest flier, but Delta is kind of a garbage airline. Short-medium class meal service is just as bad if it exists at all. The minute they determine Seattle isn't worth it they'll treat the Skyclub with the same disregard they do at CVG, SLC, or even JFK. And don't get me started on how frustrating flying with Skymiles (72 hour change rule, ridiculous pricing, etc.) is.

That said, I dunno if I really agree with Alaska's long term strategy of offering a little more (a meal in first class!) in the most cheap ... way possible (tortellini a la costco!) in a market that's increasingly moving more towards the low end (spirit, southwest) and high end (mint, paid first class) of air travel.

Would they stop at Seattle, though? If they sense Alaska is a weak competitor there, will they attack other Alaska hubs/routes? With the Virgin America acquisition, Delta could perceive Alaska as a bigger threat at SFO now, when they weren't really on the radar here in past years with a couple of regional routes. I suspect gate capacity might be an issue here, though, at least until T1 is fully reconstructed. I know some domestic flights go out of international, so there might be some capacity on that side. The bigger issue might be whether DL thinks they can mount a challenge to UA at SFO, who is the dominant carrier here. That's just not going to happen with the size of the UA operation (makes you wonder if Alaska managers might have said the same thing about Delta at SEA five years ago).

Personally, as an Alaska/Virgin America flyer now, the main item that brought me to Alaska is Mileage Plan. Delta's program is more similar to what I left behind at AA/UA. Mileage Plan is pretty unique right now for a leisure traveler that has airport access in a city with a lot of Alaska/Virgin America flights. If Alaska has to downscale Mileage Plan due to cost-related issues (a biscuit now, frequent flyer miles next?), I'd just bounce back to AA or UA here in the Bay Area, having lifetime status with both. I want Alaska to be successful so I can continue to accrue miles under the current program. I consider those miles my most valuable airline currency.

One reason why Delta is so profitable is because they have very dominant marketshare at many of their hubs (over 70% at ATL, DTW and MSP for example). They have monopolies or near monopolies on many of the regional routes from these hubs, allowing them to charge higher fares. Don't get wrong, DL does run a good operation, which also makes it difficult for anyone to really mount a successful challenge against DL in these markets. But, if DL manages to overtake AS at SEA, then I think consumers will ultimately be the losers in terms of higher airfares.

One the one hand, I think the massive DL expansion has been bad for SEA, as it has turned an airport that was actually fairly pleasant to fly to/from four years ago into an increasingly congested mess. On the other hand, the current level of gate and airspace congestion really prevents DL from expanding much more as long as AS is able to hold its own. If we remain in the current position of having two dominant carriers, consumers will at least benefit from the lower fares and increased flight frequency.

The spat is about SEA, not some desire on DL's part to utterly destroy AS. DL wanted to build up a transpac hub at SEA, and the lead-up to the announcement of those plans makes it seem like they were going to use AS for the bulk of the domestic feed. But then the announcement came, and AS didn't really factor into it. Nobody outside either airline knows exactly what happened, but there's speculation that DL wanted AS to get cozier with them and loosen their ties with other partners, and that AS (understandably) didn't want to be DL's little PNW lapdog. Whatever did take place, DL started building their international hub and began building up domestic feed for it and trying to take market share from AS.

AS isn't a threat to DL at SFO because DL doesn't really care about SFO more than necessary. The only cities they serve from there are their domestic hubs, BOS (a focus city), CVG (a focus city and former hub), and HNL (seasonally). Even setting aside the fact that they'd be fighting UA too, it's a significant market but pretty well-established as such and probably not as ripe for growth as SEA was a few years ago. They don't really have a reason to move in except to spite AS, and even if Anderson were still at the helm at DL I'm not sure if they'd bother.

Sometime around 2030 or so (it is Port of Seattle we are dealing with:eek: ) AS will get several new gates in the N terminal. Construction started last year. This is also an opportunity for them to grow unless they are giving up gates elsewhere at SeaTac.

How many of these threads are required - talk about beating a dead horse: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/alas...station-2.html

Agree. The Seattle Times piece is distressing, because it never makes sense for employees to complain to the press, and when the ship is a happy one (cfr. Southwest) it doesn't happen much. Obviously AS is not a happy ship right now. It just confirms my long-held belief that -- mainly because of the merger, and the merged company's introduction to markets where it is not a parochial / hometown hero -- AAG is due this year for a big dose of welcome-to-the-NFL.

They've never been this big, they've never had to shore up a hub market where the locals are somewhere between indifferent and hostile toward them, and they've never had to compete head-to-head with the majors on grounds other than, gee, support the home team.

The transcon product in particular is wholly non-competitive. But if you are based outside Alaska itself or the west coast corridor, the whole airline is non-competitive. A grim, cramped, often overpriced economy service, flying to too few places, too few times daily. Add a collapse in the service ethic and a (Horizon) pilot shortage and they're in crisis.

Anyone who has studied the post-deregulation history of major legacy carriers moving in on west coast stations, and / or absorbing west-based carriers, knows why that would be a bad thing. It's easier for those airlines to make money in the east and midwest, so they shift assets away from the west. And remember Delta's reason for bulking up SEA was always to feed a TPAC minihub. If that business falls off, count on the DL domestic lift to slack off too.

DL hubs at ATL/DTW/MSP/SLC are very profitable. But their hubs at JFK/LAX which has competition are barely breaking even. I doubt DL will ever achieve monopoly in SEA given AS gate space advantage and hometown advantage. But it might become more profitable over time and AS might become less.

DL is not moving into SFO, because they only make move onto airports dominated by smaller carriers. And they do this like in the case of SEA/BOS with little profitability.

AS have serious issues in SFO, DL is not one of them.

I agree DL won't make a SEA-sized play for SFO. But they are picking up SFO passengers anyway on some of AS's bread and butter commuting routes. I know at least one SFO-based colleague who moved all their SFO-LAX/SEA commute business - with AS losing all lounges in SFO, and DL's shiny new club and better onboard service, about the only reason not to switch is the flexible change policies AS offers.

That's a matter of opinion: YMMV. It may depend on time of day, phase of the moon, and whether Mercury is in retrograde...

Are you high on the legal stuff? [Don't worry, I won't tell Mr. Sessions] As others have pointed out, not having to spend $2K for base status is kinda a big deal to those paying with their own money (or those cost-conscious small business owners). You could achieve MVP for around $1K if you are based in SEA and do the SEA-BOS route four times a year plus a SEA-BLI or something similar. It's by far the easiest elite status to achieve. And don't even get me started about the SkyPeso... (rant here: https://www.flyertalk.com/forum/delt...l-falls-3.html). That was the start of how they lost my business (except for those routes where there is no other choice).

That thread is about the vague general perception by a customer that AS has gone downhill over the past year. This thread is about AS employees discussing the company's short-sighted cost cutting measures (like depriving passengers of Biscoffs) with the media that are undermining customer loyalty amid intentional slowdowns by disgruntled pilots and Delta upping their game. I fly on my own dime, but my schedule is not very flexible so I have to pay whatever the prevailing fare is, and lately Delta has just been offering more value for less without giving off the whiff of corporate dysfunction.

I've been willing to put up with a certain amount of cheaping out on the food and lack of amenities when they're providing an otherwise exceptional FF program and on-time reliability, but I'm not inclined to give my exclusive loyalty to a company who's employees are making me late on purpose out of spite for their management. With the demise of the DL and AA partnerships taking me out of contention for 75K, it's time for me to spread my wings.

That's great for people who make transcon and west coast trips on only the very cheapest fares and stick to AS metal! But that's not everyone's case, and certainly not mine.

I just cracked open my OpenFlights records and did some math. In 2016, if I adjust flight distances to account for the 500 EQM minimum, I flew 49,912 base miles on AS and partners--enough that I could've easily adjusted things slightly to hit Gold. But my actual EQM count was about 35k, because a number of my flights were on partners' discount economy tickets... and if we hadn't still been earning 100% on all AA economy fares at the time of my UK trip, I would've been down another ~4500 EQM. At this point, QF is the only partner left where you still get 100% EQMs flying in cheap Y, and I don't go to Australia on anything approaching a regular basis.

I really appreciate that AS has kept a distance-focused program, and I've gotten great redemption value for my miles, but as the other carriers have added revenue requirements to their programs and split earnings up into EQMs, EQDs, and RDMs, AS has adjusted by reducing partner earnings rates on those cheap fares. And since (outside corporate promotions and maybe a handful of other edge cases) AS doesn't issue EQMs that aren't also RDMs, I've wound up significantly worse off on the qualification front than I would with DL. Yes, I'll get shafted on the RDMs, but I shouldn't have trouble meeting $3k spend for FO, and I'll actually get 1 EQM per mile flown on all DL and many partner flights--and once I start buying the occasional paid international J ticket I'll probably have a much better shot hitting GM than I would MVPG.

WN Hawaii service is still nothing more than marketing hype, in an effort to keep west coast loyalists from jumping ship to AS. Remains to be seen if WN management is willing to take the risk the late move in to an already crowded market, where AS now has the most flights from the mainland, big 3 plus HA maintain a significant market share. As Hawaii passenger service is primarily leisure, demand will drop dramatically during the next recession / negative world event, history suggests we are due for at least one in the near term, may not be the best time to make such an investment.

Much of the recently added AS intra-CA service is provided by OO, on E175 aircraft --> MUCH lower cost structure, fewer seats to fill. Tilden likely anticipated price pressure from WN, is well positioned to fight it out. AS has developed a fairly substantial intra-CA network to secondary destinations, where WN has little to no presence, including service to PNW, including FAT, MMH, MRY, STS; in most cases, AS has no non-stop competitors.

This may explained WN's late 2017 response: companion pass promotion to retain loyalists, recognizing lower fares would not be as effective, suggests WN recognize AS is not going away anytime soon.

I had the exact opposite experience yesterday. Biscoffs were proactively put on every F seat before boarding - no need to ask. Great (new!) meal, nuts, snack basket offered around a couple of times. And I had one of the best FA's I have ever had on AS (shout out to you Ken); and that is saying a lot because I have had some pretty amazing ones. No disgruntled FA's on my flight and definitely not a race-to-the-bottom attitude. At least on this flight, it was the usual great AS service and then some.

I've swapped a fair bit of my 2018 planned flying over to WN, largely because of the terrible BUR-PDX flight schedules, but I have to say that my last WN flight was really good by comparison to my AS flight. Unlike most of my AS flying over the last few months, we took off on time and landed on time. I can't remember the last time that happened on AS.

As BearX220 points out, AS is trying to be one of the big boys but that leaves little room for the kind of service they are known for.

Which is why WN is treating this AS threat so seriously. If you don't think WN entering HI and adding capacity in its west coast focus cities will depress AS yields, then I guess we can wait until Q4 2018 and see where AS yields are at. WN is not looking to battle AS in PNW to California market. It's looking to kill yield of AS in the secondary intra-cali market and possibly to PDX.

I logged just over 100000 BIS revenue status miles aboard Alaska operated flights in 2017. Were all of the flights up to Alaska's usual fine standards? Of course not - especially catering on mid-con and trans-con flights. But aside from that, I'm hard pressed to think of any instances on the ground or in the air where I witnessed or experienced overtly egregious lapses in service standards sufficient enough to make me consider switching my loyalty to Delta or anyone else. Nobody's perfect but on the whole I'm still quite pleased with the overall product offered by Alaska, especially the benefits offered to Gold and higher Mileage Plan members.

I logged a few flights on Southwest last year because they were convenient and/or cheap (routes like MCI/LAS/PHX to DEN come to mind) and while I appreciate the cost savings, had Alaska offered nonstops in the same markets I would've happily paid more to fly AS - if only for an assigned seat regardless of upgrade potential.

How can additional WN capacity in its west coast focus cities depress AS yields in markets where they do not compete? WN is not expected to enter HI until at least August 2018 Southwest Hawaii Update | New Details Revealed, would not be surprised to see this pushed back in to 2019, later if there is a recession in the second half of 2018. As I illustrated earlier, there is limited head-to-head non-stop competition in much of the intra-California market.

They added frequency in quite a few lines that competes against WN directly like SJC-PDX (from 4 to 6), OAK-PDX (5 to 6), SJC-SEA (4 to 5), OAK-SEA(6 to 7), SMF-SEA(4 to 6)

Southwest Declares War Against Alaska and Anyone Else Who Wants a Piece of California | Cranky Flier

They also added some routes which clearly competes against AS like EWR-SAN, EWR-OAK (competes against EWR-SJC), SFO-AUS, SAN-PVR.

As for HI, not only is WN an issue, but HA armed with A321NEO will be a huge game changer in the west coast to HI market. Now, A321NEO allows HA to enter market that did not justify daily 767 and add frequency in markets that supported more than daily 767/330. It will allow HA match AS schedules much better. We have already seen that at SAN, OAK and PDX.

My 2c based on 3 years of MVPG

• AS was great if you can work within the confines of their network, as pricing on "codeshares" are not competitive.
• F product lacks, bigtime, relative to the competition
• Connecting in SEA generally sucks when trying to go eastward. Not particularly efficient.
• IRROPS is a disaster, but when things are on time, AS customer service is best
• The mix and match of partners is not as powerful as a full fledged well run alliance
• The customer-facing roles are generally staffed by happier and more flexible people at AS than any other US airline

In limited AS flying in 2017, I did notice some substantial slips in service and product compared to years past.
I moved to DL more or less completely last year. They've got plenty of issues and the miles are far less valuable, but at least I have the backing of a much more powerful network and a somewhat decent alliance. And instead of one major hub and two or three half-baked focus cities, I have a handful of major domestic hubs at my disposal when things go wrong or my schedule is tight (which it almost always is). For me, those are the most important things at the end of the day. I also took the WN companion pass offer, we will see how much I end up using it...

[QUOTE=tphuang;29265832As for HI, not only is WN an issue, but HA armed with A321NEO will be a huge game changer in the west coast to HI market. Now, A321NEO allows HA to enter market that did not justify daily 767 and add frequency in markets that supported more than daily 767/330. It will allow HA match AS schedules much better. We have already seen that at SAN, OAK and PDX.[/QUOTE]

According to https://www.bizjournals.com/pacific/...t-a321neo.html "...Hawaiian (Nasdaq: HA) will launch daily non-stop service between Portland and Kahului, Maui on Jan. 18 and flights between Oakland and Lihue, Kauai will begin April 11. This will be followed by flights between Los Angeles and the Kona Coast on the Big Island next summer..."
This does not put much of a dent in to AS' West Coast Hawaii service, where it currently offers nonstop service to all 4 major islands from OAK, PDX, SAN, SEA and SJC. AS does not offer Hawaii service out of LAX, so HA's LAX-KOA is not a factor.
From personal experience, I have flown AS to all 4 Hawaiian islands out of SAN dozens of times; flights have been consistently full, limited success with upgrades, in some cases unable to us GGU's.

As you suggest above, HA's new A321neo service will increase capacity and competition, ~1 year head start on WN. It is one thing for WN to add service between existing stations in its battle with AS, quite another to build one from scratch, 2500 miles from the mainland - with limited ETOPS experience. Gary Kelly is first and foremost a financial guy, still not convinced he is ready to pull the trigger on what is becoming an increasingly risky proposition.

I specifically referred Intra-California, making the point that AS has established a solid secondary network, with little to no competition on most routes.

Full disclosure, I am a DL flyer, but I saw the Times article and have a couple friends that work for AS, so I figured there would be some interesting threads. It is really disappointing to see how things have gone at AS. Employees are really upset with the way things are being run. Originally they were upset with their contract being below market, but most employees were willing to forgive and take below market pay for what used to be a great place to work (as I am sure most of us would). The work environment changed quite rapidly when the merger did not go as well as anticipated and Horizon began running short on pilots. Horizon cut so many flights, they actually have a surplus of pilots, but they are expecting so many to quit, that they think eventually they will have the right number of pilots. With that kind of strategy, its no wonder employees are upset. Pilots are very upset with how little they are flying and are fleeing as fast as they can - everyone I know that works at AS has submitted applications to work at other airlines in the last month. I would really like to see AS turn the ship around so it can be a race to the top rather than the bottom, but its not looking good. Both airlines definitely have their pros and cons depending on your purpose of travel - the grass isn't always greener on the other side.

AS will be flying LAX-HNL and LAX-OGG as soon as VX ceases to exist in April.

And while you're correct to note that HA's announced routes aren't anywhere near a full overlap with AS's Hawaii service, so far HA has had two A321s delivered from an eighteen-aircraft order. There's going to be plenty of expansion by the time the last one leaves the factory in 2020.