SunLover

I would rather have frequent flyers filling the seats of exit rows than civilians from the general flying public. From a safety standpoint their experience on airplanes and general aviation awareness would be highly preferred.

Maybe someone should ask the flight attendants who they would think would be better... Just sayin'...


SunLover

1bentley

I actually think E+ will stay and they will make the announcement after they cut or take away everything else. Kinda like look at my left hand not at my right hand that is taking things away.

TWA Fan 1

I hope you're right, at least that would be some consolation.

But, honestly, I think it's more likely they would simply increase the FC cabins on the UA Airbuses by one row and eliminate E+ fleet-wide. I hope I'm wrong, but that's my hunch...

TWA Fan 1

But what about the company needing to make money? A CO plat might have a better idea how to pull out the exit door..but he/she isn't paying the "tens of dollars" buy-up...so what good is that?

It's all about the "tens of dollars" baby...cha-ching!

entropy

You have a good point. Recognizing loyalty means that the airline treats you as a valued customer (say, a Plat or 1k) whether you're on a $599 transcon B-up or a $99 OW L-fare. As someone who buys B-fares, L fares, Z fares, etc, I want the airline to recognize that I push a lot of business to them, and that I am not changing, and the fare I'm on doesn't really matter.

what CO is saying here is we value the $39 from a once-a-year traveler than the long term $$$ from very frequent flyers. If they get burned by one $30k/year elite a day from that, well, it sort of ruins the economics.

Pahdz

The odds of someone getting that seat that is so incompetent they can't operate the freaking emergency exit door are extremely long, I would think. You certainly don't need "elite" status to know how to run that. I fly 5-6 times per year and I feel pretty confident I could operate that just as well as any of the elites

Speaking as a non-elite, I think the freelance idea is great. I still fly CO/UA most because of location and my frequent destinations, but sounds like it's time to just dump miles and forget trying to bank miles for anything in the future. I also guess I could be considered CO's target for selling ELR, as sometimes, if I can convince the wife and the flight is long enough, I'll purchase that seat. I don't really have a problem with them trying to make some profit (as long as they don't RyanAir-ize it) but I get where some elites are grumpy. Seems like over the last decade or so CO's elites have been victim to a great bait and switch. Always tough to offer so much and then scale back.

mnmag

I don't have an issue with a 'non-elite,' or anyone, sitting in an exit row, as long as they are capable of handling the responsibilities incumbent upon them in case of a true emergency. I just have a problem with folks who are clearly physically incapable of responding in any emergency, or cannot understand English well enough to respond, accordingly! Obviously, in any of these situations -- elite status has nothing to do with it!

Hachiko

I would rather have someone who is competent in the operation of the door. I would rather have someone who I don't have to tell three times to power down their phone/computer/etc, and someone who pays attention during the safety briefing. Being a frequent flier has nothing to do with it, and I will tell you more often than not I have had elites sitting in those seats and I haven't exactly felt comfortable having them there.

jlemon

Indeed.....some frequent flyers tend to get quite complacent.

I also have a problem with folks who think they can get away with using their electronic devices below 10,000 feet. They apparently just don't get it when it comes to this safety issue.

ijgordon

What safety issue?

Oh, and yes, I am questioning my loyalty. As a NYC flier, I have two decent alternatives -- DL and AA. I'm pi55ed at DL on an unrelated topic, and I don't love SkyTeam, particularly the lack of 3-class int'l F awards. And AA doesn't quite have the network from NYC that the others do, and I don't currently fly enough to make AA EXP so I'd have to slum as a mid-tier Platinum and pay for upgrades.

But if I find that I it becomes much more difficult to pre-book ELR seats on CO (and they don't go E+ fleetwide) because they've been sold to non-elites or Silvers, there's a very good chance the scales will tip in favor of one of the other carriers.

But, I think I'm going to reserve judgment until I see how this all works out. It's worth noting that on AA all elites have free access to exit row seating, and even there it's generally not that difficult to procure those seats in advance. But on the other hand, JetBlue seems to sell a lot of their EMR seats, which never made sense to me because their regular seats are just fine -- 34" of pitch I think on the A320s.

RNE

No. What CO is saying is it values $39 from 10,000,000+ infrequent flyers rather than 250,000 frequent flyers who conspire like thieves to cheat the airlne via error fares, hidden-city ticketing, throw-away ticketing, and back-to-back-ticketing, among other tactics.

RNE, stating the obvious, "The Airline is not your friend and you, my dear elites, are certainly not its!"

jlemon

With regard to your question concerning the safety issue, why do you think passengers are asked to turn off all electronic devices (including cell phones and noise reduction headphones) prior to takeoff and landing?

Let me provide you with several examples:

I work as an operations manager for a large helicopter operator that flies worldwide supporting offshore oil & gas activity. We operate over 450 helicopters, many of which are new or late model aircraft featuring state-of-the-art avionics and other electronic systems.

We had a large Eurocopter AS-332L2 "Super Puma" helicopter flown by two pilots with eighteen passengers on board flying an Instrument Flight Rules (IFR) approach in IMC weather when one of the passengers switched on his cell phone. The result was the immediate and complete loss of the Integrated Flight Display System (IFDS) screens up on the flight deck during a critical phase of flight, being an IFR approach in weather. Also lost was flight data being fed into the aircraft's electronic Health and Usage Monitoring System (HUMS). In addition, we had the same scenario occur on a Sikorsky S-76C++. The result in this case was a false engine fire warning during the flight.

Over in the UK, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) carried out tests on several aircraft concerning the potential dangers of cell phone use while on board aircraft in flight. The CAA investigation found evidence of interference levels that included false cockpit warnings, malfunctioning of electronic aircraft systems and interference with the pilot's headsets - all of which could have distracted the flight crew from their primary tasks.

And back in June 2003, a passenger was sentenced to 12 months in prison after being found guilty of "recklessly and negligently" endangering a British Airways flight. The jury was presented with evidence alleging the man had repeatedly refused to switch off his cell phone after being observed using it while flying on Boeing 737 operated by BA.

njcommodore

Oh please, not this again

Can we please stay OT?

jlemon

You are right, of course.

However, I felt compelled to respond to the safety issue question as I feel this is a serious problem.

Pahdz

Truth hurts guys, but RNE just dropped the hammer.