Would CO Do Away With Segment Qualification for Elite?
 

DL has eliminated segments as a way of achieving various elite levels:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum21/HTML/008362.html

1. CO is currently running an additional-segments-based-on-fare-class promo.
2. NW does not consider segments for elite qualification.

What are the chances that CO will adopt a NW/AA/DL revenue-based criteria for elite qualification????

Just curious to see what others think may (or may not) happen.



[This message has been edited by Billiken (edited 12-11-2002).]

In 2003, NW will allow the use of segments (albeit expensive segments)for elite qualification for the first time.
http://www.nwa.com/freqfly/wpprogramchg.html

And it sure looks to me like AA allows qualification based on segments;
http://www.aa.com/content/AAdvantage...irements.jhtml

So while it is possible that CO will adjust its criteria, it is hardly the industry tidalwave your post suggests.

Not entirely true... this is what was posted in the following THREAD

Continental has a lot of short mainline routes out of Houston (competing with SWA) and out of Newark; NW does not.

The USA article referred to a day or two ago on the Mileage Run board summarizes the various airlines' policies re segments.

The current CO 3x segments offer appears to be a joke. The fare has to be > $400 each way and of certain classes to qualify. With needing 30, 60 or 90 segments to qualify, I would be surprised if many people benefitted from the promotion. One would have to be only a few segments short of a goal, and very short of time (or perhaps at the far end of the route map) for flying the targeted fares would make any sense if there were alternatives.

All that being said, your guess is as good as mine.

DTW-FNT.
DTW-LAN.
DTW-GRR.
DTW-AZO.
DTW-CLE.
MEM-LIT.
MSP-DSM.
Can I stop now?

I stand corrected.

i don't think they would.

i think all airlines should have this as an option for people that fly short flights. it's not their fault.

plus, these short flights often have the highest $/mile (unless Southwest is doing something aggressive like in Texas).

Mind you, you no longer earn segments but rather segments/points. CO could simply delete the first part of the name and switch to a system like DL's. Why do you think CO has bee testing the waters with offering additional "segments/points" for higher fares???

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

[This message has been edited by avek00 (edited 12-11-2002).]

While most people probably didn't benefit, my father was struggling to get Silver this year due to reduced business travel and low fare alternatives (ie Southwest). Fortunately for him, this promotion came at the right time as he had several full Y tickets come up in the span of a month. Not only did he easily make silver, but after several r/t on CO and several connecting itins on NW, he easily cleared 60 segments. Those triple segments added up VERY fast. Sure wish I had business travel to help me out.

Nyupika,

Could you elaborate on how the tripple sigment offer raised someone struggling to get silver (30 segments) up to or near 60 segments?

[This message has been edited by 70Jaguar (edited 12-11-2002).]

Careful now... Look closely and you will see that while AA grants status based on segments for low and mid-tier elite, the highest elite status is NOT attainable by segments.

Amazing how they actually ENCOURAGE us to qualify on segments with their bizarro pricing.

If I had a dime for all the times I saw a direct flight for $1,700 and a connection for ~$250!

Isn't this an argument for CO to NOT allow people to qualify by segments?

I don't know, but reading the "thank you for choosing... sky team alliance" makes everything sound even more ominous.

DL and CO, just leave each other the hell alone.

I would assert that the times you see a connection quote a higher fare than a nonstop are because the cheaper buckets are sold out on the nonstop segment.

This does point to an interesting optimization that will be available to yield management in the future - O&D based inventory management. An example here is CO LGA-DTW. This market is the battleground of a farewar between NW and Spirit. CO matched fares on this route, but has no nonstops. CO sells LGA-CLE-DTW. When CO sells this routing as a T fare, they get less than half the revenue than if they had been able to sell an LGA-CLE T and a CLE-DTW T. Yield management might want to try to capture more revenue by creating a bucket below T for the LGA-CLE-DTW routing and as a result reserving some inventory for LGA-CLE T sales and CLE-DTW T sales.

The system upgrades for both planning systems and reservation systems might be prohibitively expensive. Optimizing this systemwide might be computationally intractable anyway.

Someone does this to a limited extent on domestic segments of international routes. I'll see if I can dig up the FT reference and edit this post when I find it.