"Nope. No one is saying that the catering costs alone exceed the revenue. The fact is that the catering costs are a small part of the total incremental cost of carrying a passenger from ABC to XYZ. The biggest cost is the fuel needed to lift the plane which is about 230lb heavier (average passenger plus average carryon plus average checked baggage). There are also costs for check-in, cleaning, wear and tear on the seats, etc. It all adds up. It's not always better to leave the seat empty rather than take a low fare, but it often is."

I do believe that they will be paying the check in agents and the cleaning crews to be there whether the seat if full or not. Unless of course their business falls off to the point where they need less people to perform these functions.....and that would not be a good thing. Some costs are fixed...others are variable.

I was also impressed with the general candor of USAir's response. However, though I haven't tracked the fares of the classes impacted (I don't often fly US, but am a highly concerned UA flyer), don't they extend above and beyond any cheap Southwest/Jet Blue fare matches?

Wow...this guy is great. A pure, honest non-corporate response. He probably won't last long. But then again, will his airline?

Anyway, the decision to do this was clearly not marketing led, and marketing has been left to deal with it, which they seem to be doing well. Maybe UA should make this guy an offer...sounds like the kind of marketing guy we all wish we had.

Mr. Baldanza should begin working on his resume. Either he should get canned for being a fool who is only generating bad press and sentiment or US air will fold because idiots like him are running the show.

Frequent Fliers have a vested interest in the airline that they are loyal to and to change the rules after years of loyalty is simply UN-AMERICAN. Another Enron screw the people deal.

Yes you do have a choice. Or at least I do. As a business traveller in a small business, I also find that I am wanted at meetings half way across the country with only 1-3 days advanced notice. My firm cannot afford to send me at $2200 a pop. So my choice is fly JetBlue for across country flights or WN (from ISP or BWI) for cities not yet serviced by JetBlue. The old business model of last minute biz pax will pay anything is inaccurate especially for small businesses in a shaky economy. JetBlue and WN not only know this, they are thriving on serving the kind of marketplace for which I am the posterchild.

I do like how the US Air marketing exec recognized that the marketplace will be the deciding factor. Yet I tend to believe that those comments were made in a tongue-and-cheek fashion. How many choices do USAir hub passengers have? Is US Air counting on market saturation in those destinations?

I appreciate Ben's response, however there is one major flaw in his thinking. Southwest may not offer any perks for the fare but they offer one of the biggest perks for a low fare, the ability to get home at a resonable cost if I miss my flight.

The truth of this is that most of us frequent flyers look for perks, since that is all we get for our time in the air and the risks of delays and cancellations.

I'm not sure that we wouldn't pay a little extra for the perk of getting milage to count toward status. However, the spread between $198 and $640 is great. Too great to justify this marketing giants words.

Actually we all might learn to live with much of what he said, but not getting milage to count toward status is just going too far.

How can they think that messing with the one thing the airlines got right will fix their problems. Nickel and dime the unions (that are over paid) not the paying customers.

Mr Baldanza is not being candid -- you're looking at a head fake.

I doubt if the response came from a marketing VP. The wording and style are all wrong. Purely amateur. A guy could get canned or embarrassed for writing a response like that. I think it may have been written by an assistant.

It's boilerplate -- we all got it.

Mine had a short note attached that made it clear that someone actually read and comprehended the content -- which was surprising.

[This message has been edited by TomBascom (edited 08-29-2002).]

Just remenber that this is the airline that bought PSA and Piedmount and put these 2 top co. in the toilet.
They also payed Mr. Wolf a lot of money to leave.
They can just add this to the list of bad mangement ideas that can be used for study in collage.

Maybe he did write it. There is a quote from him in the "In the News" thread from a SF paper in which he expresses his joy at US Airways not having to reward its perks to the travellers that take their business elsewhere. Incredible.

I just hope that local government officials are taking note. It was a huge mistake for so many east coast cities to have allowed US Air to obtain such a high percentage of gates at their airports. Now what can people at US Air hubs do about this unfair situation?

Baldanza is quoted in today's New York Times with some of the same language but a different punchline: "Some people will choose to pay more for the ticket to keep getting benefits. Other people won't, and we'll benefit from not having to give the perks to them."
I retract my earlier comment about the candor of his letter to you.

I can't find the exact statistics right now, but the quote was that 10% of flyers are paying full fare (down from 16% before). 10% means several tens of millions of passengers per year.

IMHO, how many or few people pay full fare is not really the whole issue. What I see as the real issue is the fact that they are taking away the one thing that encourages loyalty to their business - Elite status. The airlines in the last 20 years have done a great job building loyalty to a brand - just see how many "My airline is better than your airline" threads there are on this site. The industry has created a situation where a sane person (I include myself in this) would pay extra and go out of their way to fly with their favorite airline versus a cheaper more convienient flight on another airline. Why do I do this? I want all my miles to count towards my status, and then my miles get doubled or whatever by status bonuses.
Perhaps someone can (and probably will) correct me, but I don't think giving people status costs the airline much money. The same money is spent on most of the extra things you become entitled to (upgrades, frist class check in etc.) no matter how many people have status - you just have more people to share it with. OK - there are some additional costs (luggage tags, employing more first class check in agents etc.), but I'm not suggesting you give status to everyone, only those who do the sufficient flying.
As a previous poster suggested, I really don't see how the restriction for elite qualfying miles/points can help a bankrupt airline.

If AA take this position (and I don't think they will), they will lose a significant amount of business from me - I won't be able to make platinum, so I won't go out of my way to fly them - my choices will be made strictly on time of flight and price.

Just my $0.02.