2001 Platinum
2002 23,448 miles CO

However, I just reluctantly enrolled with AA.
I have been a very loyal CO flier since 1990 -when few business people would fly the airline. Now I fly for personal pleasure - not business -- I pay my own fares!
When CO was emerging from the dark days they rewarded their loyal fliers -- and the fliers rewarded them by remaining loyal. There was a "bond" -- there was a time when you called Customer Service and you got a
"real" manager who listened and would take corrective action and would reward you (miles, gift, etc) for calling -- not today.

CO grew and attitude changed!
I guess among some of us there is a sense of betrayal --- there is a whole list (HoKeY,
Intl Upgrades, etc) and a pet little pieve of mine -- the removal of over 15 BF seats from the Hawaii 767's that will make it almost impossible for an upgrade or reward ticket on the most popular FF market.

Then last month Gordon Bethune said "no changes in the benefits to our loyal customers" ---and in the same month -- without any remorse the changes came ---
I personally don't feel comfortable flying an airline that doesn't appreciate it's customers and whose CEO's word doesn't hold water---

So reluctantly I'll try AA & NW!!!
So there is another empty FC seat!!!

Feel free to enjoy that upgrade partly courtesy of me. Since I do a large proportion of International flights (where CO really sucks unless you buy BF), I earn enough free upgrades for all my domestic flights with the competitor. Have not had to fly coach as yet.

I understand that for a very frequent domestic flier CO's upgrade mechanism still has an edge over others (although not as much as advertised because of the new policies). I am making a statement to CO and not suffering for it. :-)

Again, as mweiss said, I have no problem with you expressing any of your opinions, and agree with many of them, but more with the monotony of the constant repetition of them and the tone in which they are often expressed.

And sometimes I wonder if you do respect my (and others') opinion; statements like "the truth is right there, all you have to do is allow yourself to see it" don't help.

I respect your right to be wrong by choice, but I don't have to pretend you're right. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

Venk:

Your travel patterns are not of the typical business traveller. To fly so much Int'lly that you earn enough of those e-upgrades to never have to sit in coach is UNUSUAL. You are an exception.
Most travellers will suffer more in coach by switching to AA. From what I understand...one can get about 20% of the flown mileage for upgrades. If one is flying purely domestic, they will be in coach for the other 80%....not for me. For heavy domestic travellers....CO is still the best.
I hope your "message" gets through to CO and things improve Internationally because I do agree that their policies SUCK in this area.

Ya know what? You should look at what this forum was like in 1998 and 1999. The posters here couldn't say enough great stuff about CO. We shared tips and tricks on how to increase the odds of upgrades, how to find the upgradable international tickets, where the mileage runs were...

Then a funny thing started to happen in 2000. It started out small and innocuous. Some of us started to notice that on transcons the nuts we were served before the appetizer weren't being warmed. Not a complaint, per se, just a curiosity. See, we had all gotten so accustomed to consistently wonderful service that even when something minor was taken away, we noticed. CO had trained us to have high expectations from them, in part because they were so consistently meeting and exceeding those expectations.

That's part of why WN (Southwest Airlines) has such high customer satisfaction. They set their customers' expectations (pretty low, in comparison to the aforementioned CO expectations), and always met or exceeded them.

So there we were, all nicely trained and pleased as punch. Seldom was heard a discouraging word, and the nuts were so toasty all day.

Then, things changed. First, Bronze was eliminated, and Platinum was added, increasing the requirements for essentially the same old statuses. Then, the chilly nuts. FAs that spent more time in the galley and less time with the pax. Fares started rising. CO started handing out Platinum cards to any elite from competing airlines; domestic upgrades started slipping away from Silvers, then Golds.

Then the EUA battle ensued (less filling/tastes great). The CO posters were already getting irritable.

Along comes 2001, and CO proves that our complaints in 2000 were over trivial issues. How about tripling the cost of getting a lottery ticket for an international upgrade, and then offering a consolation prize of skipping the lottery for only four times the previous upgrade price. How about removing Platinum discounted rewards? How about removing the off-peak saver rewards? Reduce the value of a OnePass mile by 50% or more! Such a deal!

Yeah, we're bitter. We stayed loyal to CO because of promises made by Gordon in his oft-quoted From Worst to First. And then he stabs us in the back. Who wouldn't be bitter? I mean, besides you?

------------------
Michael

Very well said.

I wonder if we could get Randy to engrave that into the crystal of the Freddie that the lemmings will invariably award to CO this year.

Or, maybe we can get Randy to "enhance" the Freddie, and make it out of Lucite.

That's not quite correct. The purpose of awarding miles is to raise the customer's switching costs. CO wants to maximize the value of the miles to the customer (thus increasing the switching cost) while at the same time minimizing the cost incurred to CO. While not exactly mutually exclusive, these two goals clearly require CO to find the balance that coincides with the point of profit maximization.

If your assertion were true, CO would make it essentially make the value of the miles to the customer 0.

I think many would say they are getting there. :-)

Seriously, yout statement is not inconsistent with mine just less cynical. If CO could make the value 0 but could brainwash the people to believe otherwise, both are the same.
:-)

I couldn't help jumping in on this one:

2001 Elite Status: Platinum
2002 Elite Mileage Balance:0
2002 Elite Segments: 0

Miles flown on AA/OneWorld partners this past week: 30,000.

Eat me, CO. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/tongue.gif

Welcome home Jon! Waiting on that trip report!! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

I'm not really a trip-report kinda' guy-- you know retyping the entire menu and posting every detail of the drink-service, coat-hanging, safety demonstration, etc.?

Suffice to say, the trip was amazing! I took a night-time cab ride in JNB which was very interesting and my hotel room in SYD had an unbelievable view-- an incredible place-- and very, very convenient-- The Quay Grand Suites.

More to our mutual interest, the FC flights on AA, CX and QF were fantastic-- it's amazing how quick 12 hours goes by when you are in a fully-flat sleeper-- with a fluffy duvet and full-size pillows, not to mention. Service and food were top-notch and not a single flight (out of 8 flights) was late in arriving more than 10 minutes-- and most were early.

AA's FC was the weakest of the bunch, but interestingly, I made a point of going "back" into AA's Business Class (slumming it) and I found the AA BC seat to be quite comfy, really. This was on a 767-300. The pitch looked like every bit as much as CO's BF, to my eyes, although the recline, oddly, doesn't take full advantage of same-- and that makes a big difference. Is it as nice as BF? No. Is a BF seat worth 2-3x the AA BC seat? Be serious. Of course not. Not to mention that if one is EXPlat on AA, 4 r/t BC trips are "on the house" (mileage wise) per year. Man, I'm looking forward to that-- I'm almost half-way to EXPlat already.

SR had a particularly nice FC seat-- too bad they are not a OneWorld member-- though that may be changing for the better! http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum83/HTML/000890.html

How you people stick with CO is beyond me... http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/biggrin.gif

We obviously have different objectives than you. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif

True. I was really just going for the big "closer" as it were. Truthfully, if I was a domestic traveller, as I've said before, CO would be the way to go.

It is worth mentioning that if one has a really heavy schedule of travel, on AA you would earn a good number of free domestic upgrades-- but if you travel doemstically more than 60% of the time (just approximating), you'd run out of free upgrades pretty darn quick.

Then agin, AA's MRTC is pretty nice if, for some reason, one is on a route that doesn't get EUA'd much/most of the time.

No problem with you Jon...what you say makes sense. CO is not for everyone and I wish everyone that has switched "good luck". http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/smile.gif