Originally Posted by Kremmen (Post 24411435)

This is a terrible comparison for more reasons than already mentioned.

1) If the cinema charges you $10 for a movie and $5 for a drink, the drink is a massive revenue increase. For every customer they annoy, they make a killing off another. If an airline charges you $200 for a ticket and $2 for a drink, the revenue increase is tiny. For every customer they annoy ... there is almost no upside!

2) A theatre isn't a super-low-humidity environment. Who needs a drink during a 2-hr movie? I don't, but I definitely need one during a 4-hr flight. Extortion over luxuries is always more accepted than extortion over necessities.

3) The plane crew would either have to take cash or plastic, both of which have significant overheads. The overhead of accepting credit cards for $2 a time is a significant proportion of the (airline) cost of the drink, which makes the whole exercise incredibly inefficient. Bad for the airline. Bad for the consumer. Good for the credit card processing companies. Maybe that's who this guy is really working for?

Originally Posted by Shareholder (Post 24449925)

Just another Wall Street analyst looking for his 15-minutes of fame. Considering AA's profits are at an all-time high, and Parker was burned on this once before, there's no way AA would implement such a charge. The backlash from customers, and then from staff, would be enormous and counter productive.

Originally Posted by DenverBrian (Post 24453604)

Agreed. What is it with all these companies (not just airlines) ceding control of their operations to these -ish day traders?

Originally Posted by AggieNzona (Post 24452278)

I do seem to recall reading once that a soda cost an Airline something north of $10 to get it on an aircraft. The amount of handling required was just crazy.

Originally Posted by newyorkgeorge (Post 24389402)

Wall Street analysts are killing companies with their stupidity. Its all about cost cutting (and mass firings) not about product or service quality. I've meet many of them in my former job in NYC. They are idiots. Most of them have never run anything more than a lemonade stand. On my soapbox here, but our failed our government should have put Wall Street back in its place in 2009.

JetBlue had a great product until they kotowed to the Wall Street gods. Its sad.

Originally Posted by george 3 (Post 24453840)

I had a second experience with an "anal yst" (to steal JDiver's comment), where they raised a company to Buy from Hold because the company's financial guys could change their Excel model within an hour to to reflect an unnecessarily anal yst requested change to an investment scenario. It proved only that the company had a guy who could work Excel since the company's performance sagged over the next two years and had nothing to do with the financial analysis.

So this is merely more brilliance in action, or an anal yst who likes to hear his own comments/questions in the investor call-ins.

Originally Posted by newyorkgeorge (Post 24455019)

Most of these guys are not financial experts. Their specialty are Excel Spreadsheets.

Originally Posted by coastalguy (Post 24457102)

Funny...

I left Delta mostly because of how drastically they neutered their FF program. If the new AA follows suit, I will rethink my loyalty once again.

Originally Posted by txrus (Post 24458818)

I'm sure there is an analyst who can put together a spiffy spreadsheet showing how much the airline loses by having a FF program & especially from those in the upper tier(s) of the FF program.

I would not be at all surprised to see Discount Dougie euthanize AAdvantage as soon as this merger/hostile takeover is complete. He's made it very clear in the past 6 mos he has no interest in our business or our loyalty, just our money, which is not the same thing.

Originally Posted by cmd320 (Post 24458871)

Just wait. It may start with AAdvantage but we've already seen some rather unsavory changes to premium cabins that I envision continuing. Give it a couple years and meal windows will probably be back at the pmUS standard of 4 hours or whatever ridiculous flight length it was, Crane Lake will be poured on intercon, and international F will be a distant memory (though realistically it's basically already a J+ product).

Then if AS gets absorbed by someone and B6 goes the way of Spirit and Frontier, Doug, Dick, and SmiJ will pretty much have the ability to do whatever they want. They could collectively dump FFPs all together and feel very little push from the consumer, because after all, what is anyone going to do about it..? Delta is already heading in that direction.

Originally Posted by coastalguy (Post 24457102)

Funny...

Why is it that when flying european airlines intra-euro short-haul (1-2.5 hours) in Y, I'm offered complimentary snacks ranging from a warm chocolate croissant to a ham and cheese baguette along with complimentary refreshments, with fares which cost much less than an equivalent distance domestic US ticket?