Uh-Oh
 

Might be time to start building status on a other airline for the Denver Folks.

http://www.denverpost.com/business/c...820?source=pop

Customer Service
 

Mark Belling (local Milwaukee conservative talker on the radio) went off on Frontier in the first 30 minutes of his show today.

He is a blowhard, but he makes some sense in the situation he is talking about...He is trying to go to New Jersey on Saturday and there is seat availability on the saturday morning flight for a one-way price of ~$500 to Newark...He claims to have 225K frequent flyer miles and offered to give them whatever amount of miles they wanted for a seat on that flight and they refused saying that they couldnt make any offers to him.

He mentions that he used to fly Midwest all the time and they would always try to accommodate him (make an attempt), but he used this situation as an example of why Frontier is going down the crapper and cutting a deal for the pilots to buy most of it from Republic.

Click on Hour 1 Part 1 podcast tonight after 7pm Central to listen to his comments...The guy makes some sense about why Airtran was beating Frontier (he is extremely unhappy about Southwest buying Airtran and calls them the worst airline ever).

http://www.belling.com/cc-common/podcast.html

They have clearly defined award booking rules. How is it a sign they are going under when they don't give away $500 seats for free?

Frontier is certainly less flexible than Midwest.

In the good old days, a simple phone call might get you an award seat that showed no availability.

It looks like the flight is at the point of overbooking; the booking engine will accept a maximum of two seats to be sold for his itinerary. In order for most airlines to issue an award ticket for a flight, there must be a physical seat available for that flight. If the flight is at the point of overbooking, they will not book the award ticket, no matter how many miles a customer is willing to use.

This was the policy of Midwest. I believe this is a standard FF policy of most carriers.

If this was indeed the case when Belling spoke to the EarlyReturns department, and the CSR did not explain the reason why he could not get an award ticket for the flight, there was a failure on the part of F9. If the policy was explained, but Belling just did not agree with the policy, or thought that he deserved a special accommodation, then the problem was not with Frontier and Mr. Belling needs to fill in the details for his audience.

It's funny how he now makes comments about how YX used to take care of him. This is the same guy that used to consistently hammer YX on a daily basis.

No, he hammered YX management.

FYI - these links will be replaced on Thursday after his next show airs, so these links will no longer work.

For anyone reading this thread after that point, here is the direct link to the mp3 file.

http://a1135.g.akamai.net/f/1135/182...g_Show_Podcast

Absolutely true. Midwest had it flaws, but they almost seemed to go out of their way to address customer complaints no matter what the issue was. Like you, I was able to call Midwest in the past and have award inventory opened.

Belling has ripped Midwest many times in the past, especially on their fare structures. On routes with little or no competition, Frontier (like others) charges extortion fares.

That's mostly true. One of Belling's big pet peeve's with Midwest was their smug attitude and how they thought they were so much better than every other airline out there. Maybe that was true in the 1980s and 1990s, but certainly wasn't the case in the last years of their existence.

That attitude in part lead to the downfall of the airline.

I was summarizing his comments...The point was that he sees why the airline industry (and Frontier) are having problems...He also talks about an anecdote in Detroit that he had recently where (true or not, take it with a grain of salt) he had missed his connection and was having problems with some gate agents and finally one helped him out...After the resolution he asked if she was an original Delta employee...she said yes...Then he asked if the others who wouldnt help him were former Northwest...and she just winked.

He apparently has had great customer service relations with Airtranny and used this example to show why the airline industry gets such a bad rap and they have a tough time making money...poor customer service...If he had opened that segment for calls, he could have done all 3 hours on the topic.

Personally, and I have posted on this board, some great customer service experiences with Midwest (one being stuck in toronto after having booked on Midwest, then they discontinued service so they moved me to Air Canada...let's just say I got into Canada just fine, but the way home was a challenge finally getting home through Minneapolis on Northwest)...But I havent had to fly as much recently so I havent had any experiences with Frontier that have necessitated a call to customer service to know if the care has dropped...and if there is a perceived drop then that will impact revenue (along with all of the other things that Frontier has to deal with...Defending Denver from Southwest and defending MKE from Airtranny/Southwest).