tom911

See if the top link on this list will get you in:
AMR finance stories

tom911

No, there's a new one just added tonight titled: American Airlines sets fee of $250 on certain upgrades.

lisamcgu

I am but a low Plat.

With plenty of other elites, and actual paying pax, above me in line to get into Bus, to insure I get there for a longer flight (Asia), I have just been looking at paying the bus fare to fly an AA codeshare on CX.

Of course, NOW, what airline I choose to be a paying bus pax customer for such a longer flight as Asia, and any future long flights, may surely change since it seems my miles will no longer be good for what I use them for - upgrades to Europe, where if they come thru, okay, if not, I have an emergency row or bulkhead seat with the middle seat blocked anyway.

AA - Why pay an extra $2,000 to be on your airline, or one of your partners, when the miles are becoming more and more worth d*ck?

So, has anyone ever flown NW Bus to Asia? For $2,000 less than AA, is it so terrible?

ElmhurstNick

This is the part that amazes me. After 23 years of the program and all the data that comes with it, American still can't figure out basic consumer trip generation models. There is no way that the trip generation characteristics that make a midweek low season $400 + 50k J seat attractive to somebody also make an $1800 I class ticket attractive. They had better be planning to seriously cut J capacity, because otherwise this move as communicated as a blanket situation makes no sense.

If you want to charge a $250 fee for Friday-Sunday upgrades or even for all high season upgrades, I'm ok with that, but I'd give every elite passenger one freebie during 2005 as a peace offering. If you want to waive the $250 fee if you fly 4 Y/B domestic round-trips per quarter, that kind of makes sense. There's a specific business direction with those types of moves. But 20+ years of transportation planning experience tells me that not channelling your highest generating passengers into specifiic win-win scenarios to continue travel generation, well that's a suicide mission because you already have too much capacity as it is. And if you don't figure this out, somebody else is going to come along and figure it out and take your customers.

777lover

Hey everyone, don't forget to e-mail your support for AA's entry into China. Remember, AA needs us and we need to support our carrier as they have supported us...

inlanikai

I got to the page of your link. When I then clicked on the top story about this topic I got this error message:

The document you requested either no longer exists or is not currently available.

As a sanity check I cliked on the second story (unrelated to this) and got it fine. I think they are in the middle of setting up the hypelinks and the destination pages. I'll try later.

JonNYC

Yes, now I totally see it on the link you provided-- I'm quite curious to see what it contains.

DFWRaider

This wouldn't be such a terrible announcement if AA's J service was on par with other carriers, but I find it to be a major ripoff to charge this fee for J service where a) the airline runs out of meal choices on every single full flight, b) the chance of getting rude FAs that disappear after meal service is about 50 percent, and c) the J seats are the most uncomfortable in the industry.

If AA provided a credible J product, alot of people would be willing to pay for it. Hopefully they are planning a major, sweeping overhaul of their J class seats, service, and food. If not, BA and Virgin are much better alternatives for those of us that travel overseas with any frequency.

JonNYC

Maybe they're waiting for it to pop up on AA.com (after being tipped off right here on FT.)

The more I think about this situation the more it stinks. UA's policy is so much more logical-- just "locking out" some of the lowest fare classes-- I certainly hope that AA will do some "listening" on this one and maybe entertain the idea of a happy medium.

J S

I will use up my miles for free J tickets and, after they are gone, buy two or three coach seats in United E+. Except for the summer, I can get the second seat for less than $500 r/t. I won't be as comfortable as in J, but it is a heck of a lot cheaper.

Frankly, if a mile is worth $.02 and the base economy ticket costs $350, a c-class seat on AA will cost $350+$500+50,000*.02=$1850. At that price, I can buy 5 seats across in coach. Pretty comfortable.

I have a choice of BA or AA (full fare J) to Europe when flying for work (most of the time). I fly AA only because of the ability to upgrade my leisure trips. That is the only thing I have ever used miles for (except 1 partner ticket). From here on out, it's BA with the miles going to Cathay. Pretty simple calculus, actually.

-J S

777lover

AA's approach to everything is "their wAAy or the highway"

AA in CA

I certainly think that the continued optimism going forward should be beneficial. AMR has certainly shown a strong bias in the past towards the suggestions of this board...

jmiyazawa

Just thinking out loud here with no expression of opinion one way or the other...why can't AA exempt elites from the new surcharge? They wouldn't raise as much revenue, but they'd at least raise some while not upsetting the die-hards.

JonNYC

J S

Even die-hard loyalty dies if you try hard enough to kill it.