2006 OnePass Program Changes
 

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Link: http://www.continental.com/onepass/n...B8C5144279BFFA

Good:
Effective February 1, 2006, you may redeem reward travel within the 48 contiguous U.S., Alaska and Canada on round-trip flights of 1,500 miles or less for only 20,000 miles.

Bad:
Effective April 1, 2006, some Easy Pass BusinessFirst reward mileage requirements will change:

Terms and Conditions:
BusinessFirst EasyPass reward increases are effective for new rewards ticketed on or after 4/1/06. BusinessFirst EasyPass reward tickets issued prior to 4/1/06, regardless of travel dates, will behonored at the lower amounts.

Personal Comments: Overall, I'd say the changes are ^
I mean, who really (unless desperate) would fork over miles for EasyPass anyway! Actually, I say this tongue in cheek because I know what usually happens...seems like StandardPass is never available in both directions and many suck up and pay EasyPass rates for one leg of a trip to get the flights they want :td:


Edited to add clarification and personal comments :)

another good thing that has been a rumor up until now, which surprisingly isnt on the page with the changes, but on the news & offers page:

2006 OnePass Program Changes
You can now receive your BusinessFirst upgrade rewards until 24 hours prior to your scheduled departure. Previously, 72 hours were required.

Its official and in writing on the CO site...elites rejoice! ^ ^

the changes in SleazyPass really sucks.
why not change STANDARD and make more available?

My only guess is that they want to make sure SleezyPass never, EVER gets used...which would seem to defeat the point of sucking away all those points. It might mean they're getting very good at making people so desperate for rewards that they're starting to use SleezyPass more, which means they can ask for more points in return. What a horrible idea.

I tend to think they're going to further (heh, don't know how much tighter they can get!) on the standard awards, forcing more people to sleazyPass, and hence the increase hits everyone more.

I suspect that with their tight controls on standard seats, they saw too many seats "given away" at sleazypass levels... Yeah, CIGAR, I wonder how many of that vast number of awards you cite were SLEAZYPASS, I bet its a lot higher than anyone else.

Yes, make more awards available, but don't give anyone any ideas about increasing the levels for standard!

I'd agree with this to an extent. I'd wager CO's rev. managment saw demand for EZPass was too high (as in they were 'selling' too many EZPass BF rewards) and subsequently changed the reward levels.

Also, did not DL change their SkyChoice rewards to Europe recently? Perhapes this will be the new SkyTeam norm now?

Hmmmmmm... one wonders if NW will follow suit when they announce the next batch of changes for WorldPerks. Who knows, maybe they wont need to now as they must be raking in the dough from selling isle seats for $5 and emergency exit rows for $25. Yes NWA, now you're thinking smart! Reaaaal smart. :rolleyes:

CO award availability, even for domestic coach travel, has been and continues to be abysmal so lowering the number of miles required really doesn't matter.

I suspect the changes are to reduce EasyPass redemption which is why Europe is getting a much bigger increase than Asia. That was NW's reason for the dramatic jumps they made last year.

Steve

Sounds about right.....don't provide any seats at Standard award levels so people will be forced to redeem more miles for SleazyPass awards. Now that people are redeeming at the SleazyPass level, it appears that too many seats are being given away (with the lack of capacity controls on the SleazyPass awards). Ergo, better significantly increase the number of miles needed for a SleazyPass award so people won't be able to redeem for those either. Gotta hand it to CO.....no other program comes anywhere close to them in making it difficult (if not impossible) to redeem awards.

How so? CO doesn't control its partners' inventory. Sure it might be tough to get a seat on CO, but who cares if someone else will get me there using miles?

Clearly people are using EasyPass rewards. I have a feeling it's a function of people not knowing how to check the partners (you have to call), and when you check them, you often have to propose partners and routings to the agents.

It's clear from this change that the EasyPass use has become problematic for CO. Now that fares and loads are increasing, the use of an EasyPass reward most definitely is a hit to CO's pocketbook. Unlike a Standard reward, where inventory is so controlled, they don't expect to fill that plane anyway, the cost for that seat is minimal.

Perhaps if CO stopped pushing EasyPass rewards and beefed up training on how to find standard partner awards, they wouldn't be selling so much EasyPass.

I guess the question is, which is better for CO -- to pay for a partner's standard seat, or to give you an EasyPass seat and lose the revenue associated with it. I have a feeling that paying the partner is not as much.

Sorta - I'd guess that more people are now competing for the same number of BF seats thanks to partners, promotions and what have you. I don't think that CO wants us not to be able to redeem rewards; it's just they can't give away the farm to make us happy.

Yet, when CO sells OP miles to partners (a la AMEX paying DL half-a-billion dollars) they should realize if they wish to uphold the "value" of their miles they need to make it possible for folks to redeem them. There could come a point when no one wants the miles as they feel there’re worthless due to lack of redemption opportunities. I hope it never comes to this, but if it does, it's a good example of marketing hyping up expiations through making grandiose promises but failing to deliver on them due to justifiable concerns from accounting.

Long story short: if CO is selling more mileage to partners for large $$$, perhaps they should use a portion of said funds to allocate more revenue seats into reward inventory to offset the increased demand for free travel. Failing to do so can result in a failure to meet customers expiations and devaluation of potential future partner mileage sales. (Don’t kill the goose laying the golden eggs!)

Last year Larry had a slide that showed demand for BF upgrades before and after the co-pay increased. Perhaps he will have a similar illustration regarding redemption of (or anticipated redemption) of the new EZPass BF rewards.

J. Edward, it has come to that in my case. I am the last-minute purchaser of numerous full-fare international coach tickets (due to many surprise customer opportunities). Since I fly only international, the fares are usually quite high. I would imagine that I am the type of customer CO would make the most profit on, after paid J of course. Because of the difficulty in using my miles on CO, I've begun flying partners and non-partners for all my travel. No revenue goes to CO at all, even though I am a plat. I will still book miles whenever possible from partner flights, but I won't go much out of my way anymore. It's just not worth it.
The only reason I still collect Onepass miles at all is to ensure I'll have enough to take the family somewhere in the S. Pacific in J for a nice vacation, thus using my bank in one glorious shot.

Continental is treading on ice here, as far as I am concerned.

they're reducing the value of miles even more by making BF rewards 25% more expensive. That's on top of the abysmal "standard" availability.

I can get pretty good availability in LH F to TLV through UA for 140k, why should I play games with CO?

I think all carriers have the same problem - that EasyPass (called Standard awards on United) awards are being redeemed at alarming amounts, especially for premium cabins, oftentimes reducing the number of seats to be sold at full fare.

It's quite amusing to see how EasyPass redemption amounts are only double or so that of standard awards - when full fare BE and coach fares are often several multiples of that of regular revenue-generating fares. If you look at it this way, even this latest round of increases for EasyPass business class awards still makes getting an EasyPass award a great deal.