elitetraveler

I think the point was that after some fliers achieve status with one airline, they switch their focus to attaining status with a second or third airline. At one point about 10 years ago AA used to have Threshold bonuses. It was before EXP if I remember right and you could earn about 50,000 bonus miles by making it to 100,000 miles. When they got rid of it, I took my excess flying to DL and achieved Gold then Platinum over there. A higher tiers with very strong incentives might be a smart way to keep EXPers from pursuing status with a second carrier.@:-)

paseom2

I am purely speculating along with the crowd of 'what if' AA went the way of BA and did not give miles for the lowest ticketing classes. No sense in worrying about it until it happens, I suppose.

bernardd

Being pedantic, BA gives 25% miles on the deepest discount published fare classes. Maybe you're thinking of Cathy Pacific?

Overall it seems the number of OW carriers that give at least 100% miles on all fares is now probably less than the number that don't, which seems to be an industry trend, just as 500 mile minimums for everyone have bitten the dust.

chj

If you buy cheap fares, you don't make AA money. Period full stop. You can take your business elsewhere and AA will offer slightly more Q/O/etc. inventory instead of N/V/W/etc. This will lead to slightly less revenue per seat. But if AA can offer people who buy Y/B/H fares a better experience and higher chance of upgrade and hence offer a better product as versus CO/UA/DL and sell a higher percentage of seats per flight to last minute business travelers as versus early booking leisure travelers, that will more than make up for the loss of your business.

To put it another way, if you have ever made a mileage run, you are losing AA money, by definition. If you go away, and let them sell the cheap seats to people who only buy on price and have no stake in the system, they win. As do I, given my close to 3/2 EQP/EQM ratio (before the double EQM promotion). The sooner AAdvantage moves to the BAEC model, the better. The sub-$10k EXP qualifiers are a constant reminder of the stupidity of the AAdvantage qualification criteria. When they change the rules, and you all go back to stamp collecting, I will raise a glass to Gerald Arpey.

brp

Nope. Simply not true. The marginal cost to fly another body is far less than the cost of even the lowest (that I've seen, anyway) fare. They do make some money on those fares. Now, if all the people on the plane paid that little, they'd be losing even more than they are. But the blanket statement that a low fare, in and of itself, loses money is patently incorrect.

Must be nice to fly on OPM

Of course, the number of really cheap EXPs is so small that it's ludicrous to even consider it in terms of any gain/loss equations, despite how things may seem in the frequent flier website microcosm.

Cheers.

chj

Would AA rather have you make a mileage run, or leave the seat empty? MR for sure.

Would AA rather have a mileage runner pay X for a seat and earn EXP or sell it for X-$50 to a no-status leisure traveller buying the cheapest fare regardless of carrier/miles-earning? Almost certainly not the MR.

oklAAhoma

Saying that doesn't make it true.

You just claimed that cheap fares don't make AA money, yet now you are claiming that if I take my business somewhere else, AA will offer more cheap fares?


Wow. I bet they never thought of that. I hope you've contacted them about this.

Better tell them this part, too.

Edited to add:

Hmm.. well if AA guts/completely restructures the AAdvantage program, I guess I'll have to concede your point. But until then... let's just say it's hard to believe they feel as you do. They did just offer the double EQM promo.

JDiver

Who's Gerald Arpey? Gerard's brother?

But, interesting speculative thread... given we only know that one change relates to awards: "Cannot hold an award past May 8" / Res System Changes..."

NetSurfer69

Actually, that statement flies against all available evidence from marketing literature. It is very much in AA's interest to get pax to attain higher levels of status and along with it create the expectation of greater benefits. That gets the pax 'invested' in the product/service and moves the customer from treating the product as a commodity to experiencing the product in a differentiated manner. A lot of product/service providers do this all the time by providing exclusivity and premium service benefits to high-volume customers.

In layman's terms, when I was at PLT level on 2-3 different airlines, I tended to make my flight purchase decisions primarily based on price, schedule, convenience. Since I made EXP at AA, I have been invested in AA and now tend to go out of my way to book AA flights - most of the time at a slightly higher cost than competition and sometimes making adjustments to my schedule. So attaining EXP has actually increased my barriers to exit from AA.

So, if I were AA, I would try to increase the population of EXPs and possibly even create a higher elite level.

NetSurfer69

Also, on the other site, there is a mention of training classes for AAgents. A change to EQMs by fare class would involve a system change and a press communication and not significant retraining of AAgents. I suspect this has got more to do with awards, etc. Would be fun to hear the collective sighs when all this clears up.

oklAAhoma

Exactly. It also flies against all empirical evidence I've gathered during 15 years with the AAdvantage program. Several dealings with AA have led me to believe, with a very high degree of certainity, that AA does indeed place a fairly high value on my cheap-fare-buying/EXP-qualifying self.

edlin303

I suspect there will be advanced notice if there is an EQM change, simply because of timing. I don't think they would cut EQM earnings during the DEQM promo, since they obviously wanted to encourage people to book more travel during that period.

I change to AAward redemptions would require training the AAgents, though maybe not a full class. I agree there seems to be much more looming.

bernardd

There's an implicit promise of benefits that goes with EXP. If AA were to greatly increase the number of EXP's to the extent that their domestic upgrade rates fell off badly, and they found it extremely difficult to use their eVIP's, then AA would be shooting themselves in the foot. It's a fine line to tread, particularly as the economy turns up again.

FWAAA

I tend to agree. If AA didn't place some value on cheap-fare buying EXPs, AA would have never changed the qualification criteria to permit qualification for 100k eqms (would still require 100k eqps instead).

JDiver

...much less come up with, two years in a row, a double EQM earning scheme.