currentjer

I am in the process of switching to a Non-US OW program as 75K/Emerald and will also henceforth drastically reduce flying on AS. Tonight's experience solidified my choice.

I was trying to put together a partner award flight with a phone agent as the AS website was no cooperating, but she insisted that there DEL-HKG-Japan was not possible because I was trying to do a stopover. There was NOT a stopover as the LAYOVER in HKG was <24 hours. Even a manager that we spoke with gave me illogical excuse about an invalid routing. This routing has been valid for a long time and there was obviously a glitch tonight (ever since the JL mileage "adjustment" - a lot of pricing issues have surfaced). I was exasperated. Thankfully, I managed to book DEL-HKG-(Alternate Japanese City) which showed up and confirmed online with no issues.

The agent was frankly combative and poorly trained, and she was not the first antagonistic agent I had to deal with at AS lately. I gave AS a second chance since it introduced the Elite BE "tax" from the pre-pandemic days. But tonight, coupled with some issues with certs, mileage claim, JL devaluation, and the cancellation of LAX-DAL direct services, I think I am quite done with an airline that I used to rave about and love from the bottom of my heart.

If you thinking about leaving the AS dumpster fire, please share your experiences so that it may help others (and also let remaining elites rejoice on the oft-broken upgrade processor).

olouie

The new class of agents and FAs are not doing AS any favors. So many poorly trained, overly entitled, and downright customer unfriendly employees.

notquiteaff

Which program are you switching to, and which airline(s) are you going to fly?

Flyertalker001342

I think you may be confusing the company (AS) with the current crop of employees available to be hired. Unfortunately, the younger generations of Americans out in the workforce are as you describe. As part owner of a smallish restaurant chain in a Western city, we deal with this everyday. Entitled employees who aren't worth much, but you can't fire them because there isn't anyone else who wants to work and the replacements will be worse.

I'm not sticking up for AS here, just making an obvious observation of the quality of young people out there who offer themselves up to work. They seriously suck. Blame the culture, blame the politicians, blame yourself as parents, blame the educational system. It's a sorry lot of young citizens we are producing in this country and it will be even worse when you seek medical care from the new crop of doctors being produced.

BallardFlyer

AS is not perfect, but its still better then most other choices on an average basis. I fly all but Southwest. A lot. None are great anymore. Delta will be less rewarding & equally challenging to book rewards to far away locales. Try to use pesos to MLE or MRU online. Painful. You are leaving OW and thus also AA so I won't mention the gutting of their award program in 2023. United has the most expensive and difficult to earn status now & has gutted their program many times. Its ugly in every direction.

olouie

[QUOTE=champignon;35091396]I think you may be confusing the company (AS) with the current crop of employees available to be hired. Unfortunately, the younger generations of Americans out in the workforce are as you describe. As part owner of a smallish restaurant chain in a Western city, we deal with this everyday. Entitled employees who aren't worth much, but you can't fire them because there isn't anyone else who wants to work and the replacements will be worse.

I'm not sticking up for AS here, just making an obvious observation of the quality of young people out there who offer themselves up to work. They seriously suck. Blame the culture, blame the politicians, blame yourself as parents, blame the educational system. It's a sorry lot of young citizens we are producing in this country and it will be even worse when you seek medical care from the new crop of doctors being produced.[/QUOTE
]

I actually disagree. I work with many individual new to the workforce and given the proper training and supervision they are eager to learn, work hard and professional. However the airline unions combined with cost savings and short term profit focus ruins things. Every generation blames the next few for being lazy, no good, ruining the country etc and yet things magically keep going on just fine. On Alaska I find the problem is the airline doesn’t do much training for service and lets senior FAs bid out of doing F service (how’s that for not wanting to work haha). So you basically have someone with almost no training servicing your most valuable and profitable customers. Not a good combination.

Other airlines have similar setups but provide more service training and it’s not perfect but does show in premium cabins.

Buster CT1K

It’s appalling how AS has such newly trained and green F FAs who need help from Y FAs to do their jobs. There is a serious lack of quality control.

olouie

It’s also caused by how airlines allow senior crew to do less service. Not so much F FAs needing help from Y FAs but more of that senior FA want to work Y and leave the newbies up front to do more work. Would never happen on ME3 or Asian airlines but does a lot on US/EU airlines. Senior FAs want most pay for least work 🤔

Flyertalker001342

This is going to vary by the field of work and is real. In the case of work as a FA, the major allure is the ability to travel and to recreate at low cost. There is a career path but it doesn't top out at a very high level of pay or responsibility. So you will not attract the best and the brightest, for the most part.

eponymous_coward

This thread is a chuckle. I know a senior AS FA (ex-VX). She is the opposite of “low energy”. I haven’t had a problem on a phone call into AS for quite a long time (in fact I’ve had phone reps realize errors I made cancelling half an itinerary for an ill family member and not the return, and call me back, so service well above and beyond).

Feels like a study in argument by anecdote and motivated reasoning to me, but you all do what you think is best for you, we’re talking about choosing between large corporations and none of the bricks is actually going to love you, no matter what precious metal they put in the name of your loyalty status. Mostly my wandering away from AS is my pocketbook (basically the ability to feed a lot of my domestic travel needs through credit card redemptions plus accumulated years of learned trickery here). But I would be back if it worked out the other way.

”Kids these days” - some Sumerians, probably

currentjer

I am still doing OW as I'm a hub captive in the DFW area. Since I don't care about much about domestic upgrades (I barely get them as 100/75k on AA either way), I will go with either BA or the JL program. I will fly enough to hit emerald on either with the requisite BA/JL metal segments/miles - which gives me MCE, more than adequate for my needs. And because OWE doesn't yield any premium seat benefits on AS, I will simply avoid them. I'm just glad that I don't have to deal with getting AS segments, the FFP, and/or the general decline in service across AS.

Foreign programs also tend to have stronger consumer protections and change announcement lead times for mileage devaluation. Case in point recently - Korean Air.

Flyertalker001342

I agree with the thrust of your post. These airlines are businesses with loyalty programs, and the loyalty programs are designed to produce as much profitable revenue as possible for the companies concerned. These programs and the underlying services tied to them are constantly being fine-tuned with the bottom line in mind.

If you can find a way to get as much value from award redemptions, credit card SUBs, or whatever, then you are "maximizing your utility" as an Econ 101 textbook says you should. I used to do that with AS miles and BA Avios turned in for (initially) business class and then later first class award redemptions on BA. When this stopped working reliably due to reduced award inventory, then I changed my approach towards getting the benefits of OW status. But that could change and probably will change in future years as these programs change in their attempts to extract ever more dollars out of the flying public.

Flyertalker001342

Last year I was AS MVPG as a fluke from AS credit card spend in response to an offer. I no longer have any status with AS, nor the AS credit card . During my year as AS MVPG, I got a few free upgrades to FC, all on short haul flights, which is all I ever do on AS anyway. There was benefit, but on the whole not very much from my own point of view which is why I let it lapse.

AS does have value to me, however, as a way of getting BA tier points allowing me to keep OWE status. I suspect I do not fly as much as you do. OWE status on AS does have some benefits such as seat selection, free access to AS lounges when tickets are booked with my BA EC number, access to first class check in, etc. AS is also the major carrier out of my home airport (BOI), which does have other choices however they are not great on the routes I fly domestically. AS used to be demonstrably better than its competitors, however now, not so much.

rune87

Wish you the best, but the reality is they all suck at this point. I've got friends on BA that ..... up a storm. Especially trying to get ahold of an agent if needed. Same with AA, Delta....list goes on. There is no "greener" fields at this point. I give AS the kudos for at least making the appearance of caring at this point, but the reality is MBAs and Bean-Counters are going to run businesses into the ground. Its part of our overall issue with businesses being captive to what shareholders want, which really is just turning into what hedge funds want. The overall system is broken and its just getting worse.

As far as throwing the younger generation under the bus, honestly, they are the first generation to finally stand up to 30 years of wage stagnation and say enough is enough. Businesses have gotten away with underpaying for a real long time. We are now seeing the problems the older generations caused by not keeping up with wages suddenly snapping like a rubber band. I'm a millennial and my generation has seriously gotten effed over by all of the poor choices made by boomers and GenX. Most economists expect that Millennials will never catch up to our parents due to the multiple recessions we've had to endure early on due to those choices and actions of older generations. As a professional I frequently see the younger generation as wanting to work, but they are not selling their lives to the business. They are exchanging labor for money, and that's where it ends. There is no loyalty, which frankly there never should have been. GenX/Boomers are rapidly becoming the bigger pain to work with as they refuse to adapt to cultural or technological changes, but just non stop ..... about Z. There's a real come to Jesus approaching the labor market and it will be interesting to see how it plays out.

Flyertalker001342

My business partner is decades younger than me, a millennial, and a foreigner by birth. He is a self-made very well off successful individual who arrived on these shores with 5 cents in his pocket and nothing other than brains and drive led him to succeed. We promote people from within and anyone showing the slightest bit of initiative or work ethic can go from a new hire to a store manager in a year if they showed the slightest bit of initiative or effort. Hardly any do. My young business partner is constantly amazed at the poor quality of the current crop of employees available to us, and there are constant stories about what these people do during their revolving door employments with us and other employers in our area. Not only is this terrible for us and the service we are able to give to our customers, this is not good for the employees either. It is hard to succeed longer term if your horizon is limited to the next 2 or 3 months and a sign up bonus that employers may offer.