Never mind

[This message has been edited by socrates (edited 10-28-2002).]

We still agree. My points were not meant to be a choice, but rather a total list of criteria representing some of the people who still take the lemming approach and swear by CO.

If you are a non hub, non transcon and non international (all together) elite flyer on CO, you probably think that EUA is great and can't see past the nose on your face what all of the "whining" is about.

I do hub, transcon, and international flying and think EUA is a great system overall. It makes life ALOT easier by not having to call in at midnight every time I'm flying somewhere.

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Thank you for choosing Continental Airlines, a proud member of the SkyTeam Alliance.

From PradaFA

"Yes I did say buy a BF/F ticket. That would solve your problem & you wouldn't have to play HoKeY. Simple solution."

I think the better solution is to go to an airline where I know the rules BEFORE I get the ticket..CO is a good airline domestically but I do most of my flying on NW these days...just keep the CO card until I can change over or wait for the pendulum ot swing back after they look at their FF liability from those of us flying NW but using a CO FF...

It's "ceteris paribus"

Four years of h.s. Latin, two AP tests, and 1 year of classics in college and this is all I'm good for. I HAVE WASTED MY LIFE!! :-)

On the contrary, I submit that CO still has market share only because of the loyalty amongst the low-fare buyers because of the unlimited domestic upgrades. Take that away and you will see how far CO will get in the revenue department and market share. The only reason CO does not have huge deficit spending is because it has its cost structure for historical reasons is lower than the competition. You could have the exact same award/upgrade/pricing policies between CO, UA and AA and the latter would still lose money. Do not confuse cost structure with revenue gathering ability.

You continue to peg people into two categories - only low fare and only high fare. With that set of axioms, your "logic" leads to your conclusions. When you get in touch with reality, you will realize the logic is right but the axioms are flawed and hence the conclusions are flawed.

Venk:

There is indeed a ticket mix for many pax, but again, most will TREND towards flying mostly on higher-yield or lower-yield tickets.

While CO might benefit from a lower cost structure, there is little question that CO's revenue management policies are a key reason why the company is not burning $5-10 million dollars a day like other airlines. The company is doing a good job in aligning the amount of service rendered to the customer's "true" loyalty as evidenced by the fare paid.

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Thank you for choosing Continental Airlines, a proud member of the SkyTeam Alliance.

[This message has been edited by avek00 (edited 10-28-2002).]

avek: over here on "Dr. Evil Airlines" those of us at the top who plan ahead just buy upgraded tickets. No midnight calls, and no EUA nonsense either. What makes me shudder is the thought that an approved codeshare arrangement will result in a merged ff program based on the worst parts of CO/NW and DL. Ugh.

Wrong. This is exactly the behavior that has changed in the last year. When I was flying CO in 2000 and 2001, in the company I was working for, I had no incentive to buy fares in advance by careful planning, and would pay pretty high fares to CO most of the time. People use to buy BF fares for every trip that qualified for BC seat (over a certain number of hours). Now the situation in most companies are entirely different. It is encouraged to try hard to get lower fares as much as possible especially when you have a fixed budget. But that is not always possible because of client requests, rescheduling, etc., so still need to do last minute travel or need to do last minute scheduling. The fares can be quite high in such situations. In addition, BF is completely discouraged or only used for trips that are even longer.

Meeting people almost every week in various parts of the world tells me that this is fairly common. Except for those situations where the job is such that you always have to buy last minute fares, most travelers now have a mix of low fares for planned ahead trips and high fares for last minute trips. Guess who gets my high revenue fares.

If CO's mindset is anything like yours, it has completely missed the boat on this one.

Wrong. CO is already at a stage that it cannot lower costs anymore but its hisorical lower cost structure has kept its deficit relatively under control. If they don't increase market share or revenue per customer, they will have no growth. The former is difficult to do under its "revenue management" policies and there is a hard limit to the latter. Ironically, the only way for CO to survive may be for another airline to go down. Despite, your doomsday predictions, I actually see better chances for other airlines to do well because there is so much that can be done in the cost structure.

Avek00- No sense in debating this guy....he fails to see any other point but his own. He fails to see anything positive concerning CO and will tell you again and again that you are "WRONG" even when his own knowledge of the industry is "limited,at best." At least most of us are bright enough to see both sides of the picture and are open enough to digest others' points of view without telling them that they are flat-out "WRONG."



[This message has been edited by IM4Travel (edited 10-29-2002).]

[QUOTE]Originally posted by monitor:
If you read Vulcan's posts, you will see how many of us are now treating the HoKeY and 72 hour CO rules for upgrading, even to Europe (while Ed only travels to Asia), and that is to use NW or KL (or AA) any time CO that will not immediately confirm an upgraded seat in the front of the plane. Our rule is never to play HoKeY, because if we were to end up in the back watching non-revs and/or empty seats up front, there would be a lot of steam coming out of our ears.

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Yes yes yes

This is what COs 72 hr and HoKeY rules have led me to do - If it is a non BF flight I fly CO - and I really to like the free Elite upgrades - certainly on INt'l non BF to Caracas, Bogota, Panama City from IAH. BUT since I fly enough non-BF flights a year to secure PLAT why would I fly CO to Europe/Asia/Brazil/Peru - frequent trips I make. For me I fly NW to Europe and Asia - living in Seattle this is an easier decision - but I always know that I can easily use 10K-20K to upgrade and I fly AA to Brazil and Lima. I would frankly rather sit in coach on AA then deal with the insane hassle of COs BF upgrade system. I usually get enough miles on AA to upgrade 50% of my Brazil legs - certainly much better than odds on CO with HoKeY.

Just my 2 cents:

I am CO plat who flies exclusively domestically. I am very satified with the domestic upgrades (as i'm sure most of you are), and have mostly very positive interactions with all CO employees.

With that being said, I feel I come down on venk/NJDavid/vulcan/etc.'s side as to CO's HoKeY lottery and BF upgrade policy. I know if I did any international travel, I would be going NW too.

Mopti - The last time I flew to Lima on a BF configured plane (a couple of years ago), there was no 30 day out limit on mileage upgrades, and I don't think that has changed.
I think that you can still confirm your UG at the time of purchase for South America routes with BF service if there are Z class seats showing.
Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong about this.


[This message has been edited by monitor (edited 10-29-2002).]

I just returned from Europe and saw this. Man, who stuck a quarter in this jackass?
The only aspect correct is the gender, of course. While the above post states nothing concerning its subject, it speaks volumes regarding the author. Do us all a favor, get another job. You apparently hate your present one.

Actually they've found that you DO lose money by "giving away" the BF product. Many of you will remember when the BF product was first introduced we had 2 BF cabins which amounted to 48 BF seats on the aircraft(DC-10). Also back then the UG policy was much more liberal. Well the fact of the matter was that with the vast number of seats and easy availablity for upgrade it was almost impossible to sell a full fare J class ticket. When we cut out the second BF cabin and limited the number of standard rewards we found that many people ARE willing to pay for the product.

Seems like most people on this board complain there are no seats available in international BF at "standard" reward levels but I and most reasonable folks don't consider BF to be a "standard" product either. There are always "EasyPass" seats available and considering that we do give you the miles for free in the first place it doesn't seem unreasonable to want to get some back in return.