RustyC

Today they sent out this e-mail teaser that links to

This Page

Nothing negative on the teaser and "enhancement" was my word, not theirs, but I'm a veteran of too many of these things (including tons of OnePass "enhancements" in the early aughts) to be as sanguine as they want me to be.

Obviously a place to look for anything bad wrapped in "good" stuff is anything not mentioned in the teaser. From the program guide, here are the highlights of the elite benefits as they stand today:

Am concerned they'll attack some of those, especially ones where the Wall Street greedheads might say they're giving up revenue. Of course the legacies also give up some of that for elites to an extent, but OTOH you've got Spirit with a particularly bad program that seems designed to avoid having elites with many perks or "giving" anything via perks that they charge for with fees. About the only thing that can be said for Spirit's program is that you *might* be able to book an award flight like ATL-DEN-ATL or ATL-CUN-ATL for 5K miles RT but only if it's in the off-peak part of the year (maybe a third of the total days) and only if you're a cardholder. Other than that it's a meadow muffin.

Frontier actually has a few elite perks that make the flying experience more tolerable. The (full-size) carry-on is huge for getting them to parity with the legacies (i.e. F9 elites get a somewhat similar experience to regular legacy pax, except for paying for drinks onboard). I've found the stretch seats increasingly getting booked out (or only middles left) before the 24-hour window on longer flights. Those can be a mixed bag (they can attract passengers-of-size, and not always lengthwise size), but are sometimes good.

Anyway, I'll stop rambling. Anyone have more info about what they'll be doing?

Big4Flyer

Quite a few of the family bloggers have mentioned a media-event where F9 has teased various new "family-friendly" policies. I'm guessing they'll have guaranteed seats together for families, or at the very least a bundle, similar to Ryanair, to give families a lower cost of bags+priority boarding+seat selection.

My hope would be that their points would go cost-based on the redemption side, given their low fares, but that's probably not realistic.

RustyC

Indeed, sometimes the 10K (or especially 20K) seems pricey on the award side and doesn't look good in some situations vs. paid tickets. OTOH, I wouldn't want them to do a revenue-based model on the earn side either (imitating Southwest) and one of the few commitments on the teaser was continuing to earn a mile for every mile flown.

The family-friendly bit is interesting. Could be more indication that passengers have adjusted expectations and are getting wiser to the fee-ing frenzy. Or that they don't want to deal with it and are flying Southwest instead.

RustyC

They came out with the changes today and there don't appear to be any immediate take-backs for 20K elites, which is good. ^^

The higher tiers look a bit like the legacies but are kinda skimpy on the added bonuses, but OTOH they do reflect a realistic view that they don't yet have the route system or schedule where many people (outside DEN, maybe) will be flying enough to earn that much. It looks like they're throwing that small minority (that's probably complained that there are no bennies past 20K) a bone but not taking from others to do that. ^ In most markets they're still so "thin" that you'd be hard-pressed to fly 100K actual miles in a year even if you wanted to.

Hopefully they don't go to the dark side like the legacies did and try to play the higher tiers off against the lower ones. For now they're solidly in ULCC territory for most people, and this wintertime "cold to hot" strategy would appear to be vacation-heavy.

I predict that "family pooling" will cause a lot of confusion. It's useful in avoiding a situation where kids earn miles that become orphan miles. OTOH, if someone qualifies as an elite to head the pool, the elite benefits don't appear to extend beyond the elite member in most cases. It looks like another way to plug the credit card, which is an alternate way of getting to head the pool. Also can be known as "Dad's mileage reclaim program."

Normally in business it's a bad idea to be caught somewhere in between successful models. Frontier is competing with Spirit, Southwest and Allegiant on price, Southwest in particular for families (it appears), Allegiant on the cold-to-hot (and expanding at MCO and LAS), and maybe even UA for businesss travelers in DEN who work for penny-pinching companies. Southwest is clearly betting on the free bags and folksy reputation for families. Spirit sees pax as totally price-driven animals and Allegiant is going after vacationers in small markets that don't mind going to the same places.

bajrbajr

In the markets I frequent, Southwest is higher in price than the legacies... Southwest started out as a LCC, but they are not anymore.

RustyC

If you factor in the bags (and infrequently flying families aka Kettles tend to need some and can be over-packers), the equation shifts for a number of people, especially around this time of year. Also the free soda and not having to worry your family will be split up to middle seats for not paying the seat fee (even though you don't get an advance assignment on WN, you have a better chance of sitting together with their boarding groups, though it may be across an aisle or something like that).

The 2 bags + carry-on is the biggie, though, and WN is betting people will figure out that if they need the bags they'll be as well off with WN. It's a bet on the intelligence of consumers and that can be risky, and there's a lot of Wall Street pressure for WN to charge for bags. I've seen two cases of entire families of 4 trying to go with only carry-ons on a legacy (one had a matching set!) but with Spirit and Frontier they charge even for the normal-size carry-ons, and at a higher rate than checked bags. I doubt I'd recommend the ULCCs over WN if an infrequent flyer asked me which to pick to take a family to, say, Orlando for a week.

Airline baggage fees, BTW, have been an unsung story in terms of being enormously damaging economically. It's one of those Freakanomics things and I don't have the statistical tools to prove, but the charges and limitations are a great way to crimp what people buy on vacation. Much of it is frivolous (moai-shaped liqueur bottles?) but is economic activity nonetheless and income to someone. By looking out for numero uno, I'd bet airlines have created many times the extra generated revenue for themselves in foregone purchases because of people being forced to pack lighter. But that's a whole 'nother discussion.