dtremit

For what reason, and at what cost? Keeping those kinds of granular records in an accessible format is hardly free. Given that AA has almost no reason to look back at that individual data, it likely doesn't make sense to keep it online, consuming expensive storage and potentially slowing down other transactions. It's probably sitting somewhere on a tape, but bringing that back could be a pretty major effort.

cova

CO did not keep LT miles in their databases, but was able to collect it by having their vendor (EDS at that time) go back and get the data from backup tapes. This took a year for that data to be collected. And CO had to pay to get that data compiled.

Problem is that storage was expensive back in mid-80's when the FF programs started. If it were started today, all data would be collected and maintained as storage is cheap. Airlines are now tracking revenue, this was likely not feasible to do back 30 years ago.

The FF programs are only a couple of years newer then the Personal Computer.

gegarrenton

You seem to consistently overrate AA's IT abilities. Just an observation.

HatAndJacket

On a scale of 1-10, how watered down do you think aadvantage really is from lifetime elites from CC spend, and how will that impact incoming US elites with regard to upgrades, etc?

GUWonder

0-2, more on the way lower side of that range. But the watering down is coming, and customers aren't to blame for that even if some may wish to try to do so.

But when you are a major cartel airline kingpin/management and want to increasingly live off fees charged to customers in a world where you plan to still have some fee waivers for elites, then what? Then every lifetime elite member is one less customer paying some of those post-purchase or at-purchase additional fees; and, also, the lifetime elite member is more likely to be a customer who is not as motivated to play the AA credit card game. Who can afford that? Who's going to want that? Not AA. In other words, AA's looking toward the longer-term revenue-enhancement picture via ancillary revenue means -- be it ancillaries purchased for or during the course of travel or be it ancillary revenue driven by AAdvantage customers acquisition of AA miles via AA partners. The result is that USdbaAA is motivated to slow the growth in AA lifetime elites and is motivated to cut the benefits of AA elites (lifetime as well) at the lower- or mid- mid-elite levels is to be expected as well possible and even probable. It doesn't help AA elites in the main that the US industry is dominated by 3 oligopolistic market cartel kingpins.

BoeingBoy

But what is the value side of that. A good yield management program lives and dies by the quality of it's historical data, and historical in a much longer sense than 1-2 years. That's not to say that an airline needs to keep every scrap of data on every passenger who ever flew on them, but historical booking patterns are very valuable.

Jim

NiceLanding

You're probably right. Guess I'm still thinking of the AA I flew back in the '80s, which seemed to be far ahead of everyone else in automating their systems. Ironically the main reason I moved away from AA back then was their inflexibility compared to rivals whose agents were doing a lot more things by hand.

dtremit

True, but that's almost certainly a completely separate database from the frequent flyer information. And a very different performance question -- the FF database is being accessed by individual flyers, whereas the yield management stuff is likely to be queried by a much smaller group of users.

gegarrenton

Yeah, the good old "But the machine says this" response from employee to customer.

NiceLanding

The funny thing is, back then I found that if I simply stated that the computer made a mistake, most agents were willing to believe that (except at AA, where they had too much confidence in the machine).

Superguy

It works well for UA these days.

SanDiegoDallas

These days that data is cheap to store and golden to mine. Spending a bit to pull that data from tapes and ingest it into a data warehouse is a worthwhile investment.

DCdeacon

Current US elites are going to have a rough time with upgrades when the two programs are merged, regardless of the impact of all those inflated lifetime AA statuses from non-BIS miles. Even the lower level US elites (silver/gold) have pretty decent upgrade percentages on many routes right now, but I just don't see that lasting when the ranks are merged.

MiamiFlyer

They tracked (and exchanged revenue) by measuring how many inches thick a stack of tickets was until just a few years ago. Revenue (yield) management systems didn't track FF data at all.

Chrisdg19006

Any one have an idea on when/how this will be done? I know the FAQs on the website say the programs are staying separate for now, but I think that is only for a transition period. I'm interested in getting my US and AA miles and segments merged into 1 account. Due to my Company's travel policies and trying to find the cheapest ticket, I have lots of activity with both airlines, probably would equal US Gold if combined.