SFO777

I can't decide what is more repugnant. His selfish and irresponsible actions that killed this for the rest of us, or his oblivious postings today as if he was an innocent, surprised and saddened bystander.

Maayan

What's repugnant is how you jump to conclusions. On what do y'all base these accusations? Do any of you work for LM or DOT? Give verifiable evidence please. For all we know this could just be the much-anticipated result of the golden maiden pointing out some things to LM. No one seriously thinks that she wouldn't look into a strange phenomenon where so many are doing what we've been doing with what's normally expensive award tickets, and figure out whats going on and call someone up at LM? And of course some here wouldn't fly quietly in J, oh no, they had to do it in F... When F pax systematically don't pick up their duckies, it's bound to raise some questioning eyebrows.

Also, how many times have we seen availability vanish, only to come back a few days later like as if nothing happened? So maybe take a bit of a pause before lynching here.

By the way, the 4-Cs boomer that I mentioned a couple of days ago is working just fine this evening. No blondes on this one.

TheBOSman

Well, it's either DOT or the maiden making an expensive call. The key is that the latter is inevitable, other than an unlikely case where everyone was no longer booking the awards. That is a normal procession, and I wouldn't be mad if that was the case. However, considering the length of time with which this has been occurring, if that was a significant issue then I believe it would have happened sooner. However, it was effectively out of our control.

The former was very much preventable, and should never have happened. That was within the control of us, and selfish ignorance was chosen as the preferred path.

Here's how this works: as long as "(cost of problem) < (cost to fix problem)" then things keep going. What's the cost of tickets as you mention? Several hundred dollars? Who cares, LM has quite a bit of money as revenue from people buying miles for those tickets. Easy enough to pay off the maiden or anyone else for whatever deficit exists or issues appear, and any costs are likely well below the cost of fixing as we are only in the three figures. However, once DOT is involved, the costs increase greatly. The problem now costs as much as $25,000 per ticket. The potential cost of the problem has increased 50-100x. Now, "(cost of problem) > (cost to fix problem)", and likely by a significant margin. It becomes a priority to fix the problem. And, while you're in there, to stick fingers in the smaller holes of the dike as well.

Do we "know" why things have happened? No we don't, and probably never will. That doesn't excuse something that should not have happened, that did happened because of a selfish act. Go back to when the act was posted about. How many of the heavyweights of this side of FT condemned it? Many of those heavyweights are people for whom this is not their first trip down this lane, who have been through many wars with the airlines and have the scars to prove it. These are people who are known by more than just a screen name on a forum to each other. There is a lot of knowledge contained within this forum, but it was decided in one instance not to take advantage of it and instead go down another path, which has led us to now.

Maayan

Just as you say yourself, we don't know and never will, and therefore we can't place the blame on Jeff no matter how much we may want to, because there's just as much chance that his event and action had nothing at all to do with this. Off your obnoxious horses everybody, until you have proof.

ETA: I'm curious about TheBOSman's "Several hundred dollars": for F tix? Seriously? If that's what *A pay each other for F then how does LX come up with $15K-$24K cost for the RGN F tix? OK but that's OT here.

TheBOSman

Considering that the DOT addressed part was fixed first, and this was fixed after it, it makes it clear to me.

As for several hundred dollars, I'm using numbers I've seen from relatively reliable (at least as reliable as I will get anyway) sources that have been published. The actual numbers are trade secrets. LX used a value that must be derived from what a paid ticket would go for. Let's put it this way; at 1.5 cpm, and 72,500 miles each way, booking LH F BOS-FRA (or anywhere else US-Europe) results in LM gaining a revenue of $1087.50. If LH charged LM significantly more than this for this flight, the price would go way up on buying miles. It clearly cannot be much more than this. The difference I believe then is several hundred dollars at most, and it wouldn't surprise me if LM actually made money. They definitely must at the normal rate of 3 cpm (or again, that would be noticeably more) but they can't lose much at 1.5 cpm as that is the points and cash rate.

jfkcnf

Pardon my ignorance, but how did you guys figure people called the department? Must have missed it somehow. Or are you just assuming based on the lack of availability?

wheresmybagba

A prominent member here knowingly booked an itinerary which violated cabotage rules. When they were denied boarding at the airport they filed with the DoT.

drzoidberg

Why would they knowingly book a trip that violated the rules?

wheresmybagba

You'd have to ask them.

My guess - they wanted to post a pic of a Rimowa amenity kit and some Dom on their blog.

SFO777

Absolutely. As TheBOSman correctly surmised, once LM got the call from the DOT and started the internal investigation, it's not hard to see how even the non-cabotage "mistakes" are caught and similarly eliminated.

rankourabu

I wouldnt say prominent. Many other adjectives that would not be allowed on FT come to mind tho.

Its not just a coincidence that LM finally decides to tinker with their booking engine after ignoring it for a couple years.

They may have ignored stuff because it wasnt worth fixing, but this thread is like rubbing it in their faces.

yerffej201

Thankfully I still see some boomerangs. just not all of them.
It's sorta funny that I was intending to post my situation online because I wanted people who had similar tickets to me to have backu plans. we can disagree all we want but I would hardly call my behaviour repugnant, selfish and, irresponsible. i would also say those who think that it was my mistake when I was denied boarding at lax are wrong, as from the result of the dot, lm, br, and my negotiations have gone.

we can argue all day that it was my complaint which caused lm to fix everything or not. one argument i could make is that they fixed guam quite a few days ago. they removed the option to select guam when using eva under the drop down menu just over one/two weeks ago. they fixed boomerangs as far as I know yesterday. this would just go on and on because none of us knows for sure what happened with lm, although i would agree with most of you that there's a chance that my complaint would fix this. but i had no idea about fixing non-cabotage routes, believe it or not. it was never my intention to draw attention to these routes. i can't turn back time.

rankourabu

oh please.

Probably the dumbest move since AFWD fuel dump exposure.

And you know it is directly related to the recent "tinkering" by LM with their booking engine. Own up, you knew this was gonna happen, you were warned by many it would - yet you chose to keep acting selfishly and file DOT complaints.

Glad you got some substantial compensation out of this from Lifemiles/BR. Your win is everyone else's loss.

nemme99

I disagree. He didn't know it would happen because he was in a bubble and didn't think one step ahead, only how he deserved compensation. Now the connection is clear. We can all argue for the rest of time if there was a direct connection between the DOT complaint and the loss of many of LM's good parts but it's so obvious even Occum's Razor applies. All the open coding doesn't help either. I'm only a part-time FFer but even I took the time to learn everything the hard way and then not share openly. Related: I did also walk up hill in the snow both ways to school, in case you were wondering.

rankourabu

You dont think there was anyone warning him this would happen. People who were much more experienced, and people who were much more 'prominent' - and definitely 100x smarter.

It was all a choice of actions - playing victim of ignorance now does not fly.