Spiff

For all I care, USAir can now reduce its capacity to 0, and preferably via Chapter 7 so that such an unfortunate experiment can never rise from the dead again. They are worthless to me and I will never fly them. If USAir wants only full fare passengers, they can turn those lovely Dash-8s into corporate aircraft.

Whether they offer 2000 flights a day or 1 flight a day, my butt will never be in one of their seats, regardless of the fare I'm on while they have this rule.

jcrb

Thats the dumbest things I've heard all day....

Thinking that US can raise prices when it's future supply decreases to less than the current demand, assumes (incorrectly) that they have the only supply, and there is price inflexability of demand, neither is true. They will reduce capacity and increase price and lower demand because we will be flying other airlines.

Bye

Spiff

Um, Mr. Math Genius,

Southwest awards flight credits not miles. It is possible to earn a free trip every 3-4 round trips (help me out here folks, I don't fly WN) regardless of fare paid on those 3-4 trips. One can then use that free trip for a flight that is potentially more expensive than the sum of the three-four cheap trips.

I don't know why you feel the need to beat this thing to death, but you're going to get zero support from the folks here on your unfounded and short-sighted (and caluclated) assumptions. Why not just get over it and get on with your life?

NW.BTR.Than.The.Rest

I just got onto this site recently, and enjoy it. Don't even respond to someone like FT Wannabe - he is just trying to incite you, and seems to be successful.

Don't fly him, and he'll go out of business.

jcrb

At this point I am convinced that FT Wana works for either US or UA and is trying to make a good show of this to avoid FT generating bad press for them, as such he must be countered fully. Look at his first post in this thread, he comes from nowhere and fully predicts a week in advance exactly what kind of changes would occur. It was an attempt to "get us ready" for the anouncement. Well guess what, it didn't work.... nor will it.

TomBascom

But US can profit from a $200 fare. So do your heros at SW and so forth.

Where does 2,500 miles come from? Most of US' traffic is short haul east coast stuff...

But at any rate 75 trips probably only bag me 150,000 miles -- not 750,000. Maybe 250,000 if the bonus environment is "rich".


Perhaps you've missed it -- US' load factor is around 75% -- paying customers are not being displaced by "free trips." No revenue is "lost" when someone redeems an award.

There you go again advocating a rise in ticket prices -- I thought your interest was in attractive fares?

Ticket prices are on a one way road -- and it isn't higher. The sooner the majors come to terms with that and rationalize their fare structures and start focusing on the value that customers expect in exchange for their money the sooner they'll become profitable. They'll discover that business travelers are not the same as leisure travelers (even when they're traveling on leisure) and that policies designed to treat business travelers like leisure travelers won't work.

Mook

Right, and wrong.

Ticket prices are going higher. For leisure travelers used to $200 trans-cons, that is. There won't be enough capacity left in 12 months' time to support those sorts of fares.

But at the same time, there's no way airlines can justify, or people will support, paying $2,000 for that trip in coach. The majors might like to think so, but with hateful policies towards their elites such as US is trying to introduce, is anyone going to be able to justify flying them vs. WN or J6?

What I think we'll see instead will be a compression of fare buckets, potentially into 3 or 4 instead of the 15+ we see now. Grandma and Grandpa will be paying $400 instead of $200 to fly SFO-MIA, while the last-minute traveler will pay $800 or $1,000 instead of $2,000 to fly the same route.

At least, that's what airlines will have to do if they hope to stay in business. Or they can follow US's route, and fly non-stop to Hell, with a short layover in Chap. 7.

Mook

TomBascom

We'll see. I wouldn't bet on that though -- SW just cut their top fare. I agree with most of the rest of what you said except I think you're too high... The spread won't be that wide when it's all over.