bman1002

I think I would prefer the connection in LAX/SEA vs driving Northern NJ to JFK or NoVA to BWI

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and feedback.

MiniC

I encountered IRROP's at EWR once this past March. While enroute to the airport, got a notification that my EWR-SFO flight got cancelled due to mechanical issues. On a Sunday afternoon, the only option available was a connection through SEA; ended up missing this due to staff at the counter who refused to print a boarding pass (app kept erroring out while trying to check in). I called reservations, who told me at this point my only option was to fly JFK-SFO the next morning. In retrospect, I should have asked about flights on UA, DL, or AA. Since I was already at the airport, I did try to standby for later EWR-SFO/SJC flights, but the GA's for three different flights incorrectly told me that was not allowed, even for MVPG's Ended up getting onto a EWR-SJC flight, thanks to a GA who said he would let me + companion standby as a "one-time courtesy". My friend lives in SF, so had to take an Uber back, which Alaska refused to reimburse; they had given each of us a $150 discount code, which they stated covered the cost of the Uber . Since this flight, I've avoided flying AS out of EWR completely!

rustykettel

Last year due to ATC delay, I was likely to miss my connecting flight through SEA or PDX from SFO. AS put me on the nonstop UA flight but I did have to prod the GA a bit, and the senior GA made it happen explicitly due to status and missing the connecting flight (overheard from the conversation to the junior GA).

In the past, I've been rerouted on AA PDX-PHX-PVR when PDX-SFO[-PVR] was delayed and on DL from ATL when weather delayed my incoming flight. The one that mildly annoys is that if you're on U, you won't be rebooked into a premium cabin on others and not directly on AS (unless it's in advance and a supervisor okays it).

milypan

Yeah, I guess I don't have the same perspective. Frequent flyer programs purportedly tracked miles because when they were created the reservations systems were such that it was much easier for airlines to track miles (which are known and fixed for any flight segment) than it was to track fares (which they would only know after tickets got processed with some lag). So I view it as nothing more than a historical accident and stroke of luck that I can earn more miles/status flying 90k miles with $7k spend than someone who flies 50k miles with $10k spend, and I don't expect it to remain this way in the long run (even on AS). Arguably they're just correcting a system that never made a lot of sense to begin with...though I'm perfectly content to have them take as long as possible to correct it.

MSPeconomist

I'm not sure I believe this explanation--that in the early days of FF programs it was easy to track miles but hard to track spend--even though it's been claimed often.

In the early days of FF programs, there were paper tickets that did have fare information (except for various special package fares, etc. that could easily have been excluded or given some lowball mileage).Back then, one applied a sticker with the FF number so some particular place on each flight coupon before the GA pulled it when boarding. So the information was right there, and didn't require looking up the distance for each segment, which did not appear on the ticket.

sfozrhfco

AA started AAdvantage in 1981--the same year they moved to DFW and started the hub and spoke system. It was a simple way to encourage people to take an often out of the way flight through DFW rather than take a non-stop from the nearest big city. Fly BOS-DFW-SEA and watch the miles add up. AA was also largely a domestic carrier at that point so they did not have to give away a lot of miles. The mileage system still worked well as carriers started to open up international long haul service. UA could offer triple miles on their new flights to Asia/Australia to basically give away a free domestic RT or more as an incentive to try them out. It was easy to understand and often very lucrative for passengers will to do crazy multi-stop itineraries with easy upgrades on every leg and very cheap fares. Over time though it got out of hand. Fares within the US are largely priced one way now and airlines prefer you go non-stop rather than taking a 3 flight itinerary each way within the US to get top status for the least amount of money possible. The US3 and WN control a large segment of the domestic market as well so it is not like somebody based in ATL is suddenly going to switch their loyalty to AS/B6 or even AA/UA when the choice of destinations served non-stop would be minuscule compared to DL. Long distance flights like those to Asia just get cheaper and cheaper in coach as well so it really does not make any sense to only look at distance. A person could pay just as much for a last minute non-stop from BOS-LGA than from LAX-HKG so why give more credit to the cheap tourist as opposed to the business person buying very high last minute short flights? It has been a long process to get where we are but it is inevitable that airlines continue to chip away at the mileage based system and it won't be long before the rest of the them--including AS--give it up completely.

xliioper

Not seeing your point. Great circle distances don't vary with each ticket (unlike the fares) and are easy to calculate. What difference does it make whether or not the distance is recorded on the ticket? All the airlines needs to know is point A and point B. With the primitive state of IT back in 1981, I could understand where there might be cases where the FF system might not be able to access paid fare information back in the day. Further, this was shortly after deregulation and the fares tended to correlate with distance more closely than today.

jiburi

UA changes Mileage Plus. AS has little or none to gain, other than PDQ waiver sensitive UA members who will now become free-agent. UA route network in/out of SFO is still unmatched by any other airlines and people will continue to choose route options over frequent flyer benefits and/or price. AS route and frequency cuts at SFO doesn't help this issue and will continue to lag behind at SFO.

Jiburi

worldwidedreamer

Would not be surprised if a significant percentage of seats sold in SFO were to people with PDQ waviers.

As United has reduced the value proposition for me, my elite status has gone from 2002-2018 UA (Usually plat or gold), 2019 UA Gold + AS MVP + WN A and will probably be 2020 AS MVPG + WN A.

Also---don't discount the value for Bay Area customers with four airports that have decent service, versus two for UA.

steve64

As often as FT'ers like to complain about airline IT these days, it really was archaic back in those days. I was a Gate AAgent way back then.
Systemwide, tickets were collected and sent to Revenue Accounting in Tulsa (and in later years to Barbados due to cheaper labor) for data entry. Every. Single. Ticket. And for clarity, there's no such thing as an e-ticket yet.
Each flight's tickets would be sent in a different envelope. The Agent had to sort the tickets into 5 specific groups that were based on how "time critical" it was to do the data entry for that group. IE: tickets for AA flights that ere "plated" on a different airline had to be processed first (the ticket needed to be submitted to the Airline Clearing House so that AA could get the $$$ from the other airline) and non-rev passes were bottom priority (service charges were much cheaper than any fare).
For a station the size of DFW, it took 2 Agents on the graveyard shift to catalog all the flight envelopes and prep for shipping. It was my understanding that "today's" tickets won't start data processing until tomorrow night.
That was the system that evolved from way back whenever airlines started developing interline agreements.

FF systems aren't that old, so they didn't evolve from paper trail procedures.
My high level understanding was that when I did the "P2 CLOSE" entry for a flight (I have reconciled the physical tickets collected against the SABRE manifest of passengers on-board) then a small electronic file was generated that basically said "here's flight #1 23 DFW to XYZ this date, this distance, here's the AAdvantage #s ". SABRE would combine these small files into a large batch file to eventually be run into whatever computer ran the FF platform. All electronic from day #1 . Before doing the P2 entry, I had to enter the FF# for every award ticket, so there was a little bit of manual work involved.

dayone

AA was all-electronic from day one. My recollection is that UA was not.