Their costs are much lower than US/Europe based airlines (ask their pilots how much they make) so the comparison is moot.

Overall, CO is doing better financially than UA or AA. I have seen about the same occupancy in Business class for UA or CO. Given how impossible it is to get upgrades/awards on CO, they muct have a larger proportion of paying customers than UA. Anecdotal, I know.


That has been my experience having flown UA and CO business class right up to the amenities kit, attention from FAs that UA can only match in a fraction of the flights, availability of functional empower outlets, food selection, etc.

The current climate is what makes the yields nad the proposals in this thread extremely important. It is a consequence of a downturn in travel and an increasing number of overhang in miles and elite statuses in all the airlines that they cannot continue to support as if they meant nothing.

But then you also said originally that most of those things do not matter to you. What is "broken" with UA that you are attempting to "fix" with a solution of further degradataion of benefits?

Customer loyalty should be built from the ground up. The FF program should be the icing on the cake.

Run a good airlines with good performance records and you are set. Instead, most airlines use the FF program to make up for their inablity to run a good operation.

Example below. Would you rather have one or two?

1. Sorry for the problem, have some FF miles on us?

2. We will take action to make sure this never happens again, and will check back with you after your next few flights to make sure our improvements are working. Here is my direct number, call me right on the spot if this happens again!

If I wasn't clear on this, there are two different constituents here. Premium fare paying passengers of business class and coach flying FFs with lots of miles wanting an upgrade (I will ignore the small intersection for the moment). I fall in the latter category. For the former category, loss of services is a big concern. If upgraders are complaining about the degradation of services in UA business class imagine what the premium fare paying travelers must be thinking. If there are no corporate constraints, I can see these people migrating to CO if it offers a better value for their money. It is my assertion that UA cannot continue to satisfy both constituents with the same class of service.

As I am in the upgrader category that will rarely buy a business fare I would rather have a intermediate upgrade that I am more likely to get without silly rules than have a "pie-in-the-sky" promise of an upgrade into the current business class with fare rules and capacity controls that leads to more disappointments and lack of loyalty than satisfied FF customers.