While the point above and others in the thread are valid, I think most responses missed the big picture. The essence of a loyalty program for most people (not necessarily FTers) is simple: Get a certain number of miles in a program and then redeem them for a free trip. This redemption task is indisputibly more difficult than years ago.

Randy mentioned several items not included in the piece. One item not included that bolsters the article is the low fares from the likes of Southwest and JetBlue. Will you pay a higher price to get miles in your main FFP or will you pay less and be treated as Mr. Gold while paying Mr. Fudd prices?

Dunno about Darren's ability to recognize "good" journalism biting him on the butt, but he's batting 1.000 on spotting bad journalism. :D

[QUOTE=osxanalyst]United is the only Airline/FFP that does this in any significant way. :D QUOTE]

As others have stated this may not be completely true. I also know that as an elite with AA, I can reserve aisle seats toward the front of the plane. I know this as I just bought some tickets for my daughter and I under different PNRs. I wanted to put her on the aisle and me in the middle seat as I have an upgrade requested. If it goes through, I will let her go up front. But I wanted to take her aisle seat in that case. Unfortunately, while I can see and reserve it, she can't.

[QUOTE=hhoope01]The key word in my quote was "significant". All airlines do it to one degree or another, but only United reserves the front half of the plane (and with More Room, not LRTC)

;) :D :)

Examples?

All news organizations make mistakes. Show me one that engages in as much public self-examination and self-correction as the New York Times does.

[QUOTE=sjc_longhorn]Okay, I stand corrected. Some airlines offer better seat selection for elites. But what happens when the plane starts to fill up? Are they going to continue blocking out those seats from non-elites when all other seats are sold? At some point I would think those seats would open up to everyone.

[QUOTE=XStAnt]Ridiculously enough, it doesn't appear CO opens them up at any point, or at least not until THE very last minute. I just pulled up a Monday flight (35 hours or so) from AUS-IAH-SJC and picked the Y/H fare. When I pulled up the seat selector, it still wouldn't give me (logged in non-elite) any of the blue seats. When I logged in as elite it offered me the seats. So I was wrong, it won't give non-elites the seats no matter fare class they're in. Goofy...

This limitation is actually pretty new. The seat selector used to allow anyone to grab the "premium" seats, unless maybe they were flying on an L fare or something. CO seems to be trying very hard to alienate its "non-elite" flyers. Who's gonna pay $550 to get seats like 22F when they can see that seats up front are open? This is where WN slaughters the legacies. For $309, you could get a refundable Y class ticket from AUS-SJC on Monday with a better route and, if you check in a reasonable amount of time, sit pretty much wherever you want. Refundable, no change fees, and no 22F.

Well, from the travelers perspective, I don't believe it is. I won't even attempt to fly an airline unless I know I can either (a) grovel for a low-elite comp, or (b) hit 25,000 miles quickly with a few long segments. For example, I won't even consider flying DL, NW, or CO - even though I'm doing some business trips for which DL would probably be the ideal carrier.

The only thing I can come up with is that it's more lucrative for them to fill the plane with cargo than passengers. So to them, their ideal situation would be a plane maybe 70% loaded with pax (nearly all elite) and then loaded up to the maximum allowable weight with cargo. Whenever I am forced to fly the legacies as a non-elite, it literally feels like they are intentionally trying to dissuade me from flying them ever again. I don't get it...

Not sure I agree with this. The creation of alliances, for example, has vastly expanded the routes and destinations that can be reached on an award ticket.

Well, the potential for claiming awards has indeed improved for the reasons you cite. But I'd contend that overall availability has declined despite this.

Clearly the author's mistake was his allegiance to CO. :)

If he was a UA or an AA customer, he could have maintained status by simply buying it (well, perhaps not EXP) assuming it was important enough.

To be fair to CO, it is almost comical to select one flight as an exemplar for an entire airline. I was recently booked on 2 UA transcons next week which currently display only E- middle seats. There are some flights that are very popular and the early bird gets the worm. Which isn't good for the business traveler who buys an exhorbitant last minute "walkup" fare and gets worse treatment than the vacationer who planned a trip months ago. UA used to hold back some seats for its premium fare travelers, but I don't know if this is still the case.

I'm sure this is true. Loads are extremely high right now, which makes award availability hard to come by even if the airlines aren't doing anything malicious like secretly changing the formulae by which award seats are made available. It's simply a strong market for paid travel right now.

That said, I've got 4 award seats MCI-DFW-PVR round-trip coming up for Easter break. And I've got 3 award seats MCI-ORD-YUL a few weeks after that. Those are two markets where the paid fares stink out of Kansas City, so awards were absolutely key to doing these trips. All on the dates/flights I wanted, all booked a couple of months ago (January). And I'm contemplating both Hawaii and Europe for this fall, and I'm finding plenty of stuff available through either ORD or DFW out of MCI.

So I can't complain too much. These days, I earn twice as many miles as I used to because there are always promotions running - sometimes promos on top of promos. Last week, I flew United to Seattle and will earn close to 300% total mileage because of promos. (I'm Premier, so only 25% of that is elite bonus.) I don't think the sky is falling - but I do see the airlines gradually nudging us to the point where the standard awards are truly for those willing to fly on very off-peak flights, with the "2x" awards for those who want the prime dates/flights.

My only complaint is that there is no transparency. I wish we had more insight into how the system worked. How seats are allocated, that kind of thing. If think if we knew a little more about the underlying fundamentals of availability, we'd be able to plan better and complain less.

Actually, it's not just Economy Plus where they block the middle seats and it's not just 1Ks. All Premier (25k level) members and above will have *any* middle seat blocked, next to the one they have pre-reserved, Economy Plus or not. The seats will be unblocked only if it's starting to get full.

Yes - I just noticed this last week (I'm a new Premier). When I would select 4A online, 4B would than show as blocked. Since 4C was available, it was obviously due to my status. ^ (IIRC, AA used to do this as well, but doesn't so much anymore. Perhaps that's because it becomes a lot more difficult to do on a fleet with so many 2x3 Mad Dogs.)

The only question I have is if I'm the guy checking in later and I see 4C available. Is there any way to tell whether 4B is really occupied, or if it's been seat-blocked for an elite in 4A, meaning that if I take 4C there's a very good chance it'll stay empty?