US Air and AA have defended the zero value for unused tickets by making an analogy to unused theater or concert tickets, which obviously have no value after the event. When was the last time they oversold a concert, play or a ballgame?

If my unused ticket absolutely meant my seat was flown as an empty, I could understand. But we all know that when we cancel or change a non-refundable reservation, that seat is immediately offered for resale.

Maybe it is time to have re-regulation. After all, what is worse... deregulation or what we actually got... self-regulation? Heck, there are more regualtions now than there ever were, only the carriers are the ones making all the rules!

Lets face it US air believes that their average passenger is a sdumb as a brick! They will let this steam for a couple of weeks and then make a couple of minor changes.The great unwashed will think they have won a concession and keep on flying. Delta did the same thing a few years ago with their skymiles program. You would be hard pushed to find any business travellers that even remember the old program. They honestly believe that the current one is superior. Classic marketing strategy that works because the average consumer has the attention span of a gerbil.

I guess the thing that really gets me about the responses we've seen is the overwhelming disrespect for all but thier full fare fliers. Pretend you dont care about status miles, but are the once a year type. Why would I, if I flew once a year, want to fly USAIR after reading that response? Basically it calls everyone else worthless. Ok...rant off.

I don't buy the that theatre/concert ticket analogy, if I can't make it to the show I can give/sell my ticket to a friend/neighbor/somebody on e-bay.

If so, the feeling is mutual. :-P

[This message has been edited by nsx (edited 08-30-2002).]

since when doesnt southwest offer perks?

I'll give up my preffered status, and continue to fly my 100+ segments in discount economy and sit in coach everytime if they give me a companion pass like SW does

Face it, most people do not care. All they care about are non-stop flight choices and the cheapest ticket. The average person would fly in the cargo hold if it would save them $20. If past history is a good indicator, this new policy change will not impact their bottom line.

An alternative position....

In business school, they taught us a two step system to revive a dying company.

1) Stop the bleeding...save every expense you can.

2) Infuse blood....find every red cent you can get your hands on, and squeeze tight.

Thinking about this, I would suggest, their decision to remove points from low end yields makes perfect sense to me.

10% of their flyers are full fare...what does this represent, say 60%-70% of their revenue...the old 80-20 rule. This move will not affect these flyers.

About 50% of flyers don't collect frequent flyer points...again no change to them.

The 40% of you who do collect Dividen points and only pay $200 a ticket, are the ones (through no fault of your own) who are bleeding this company dead.

Say you pay $200 for a BUF-MCO ticket. I could argue the airline isn't making any contribution on this at all. However let's say they actually made 10% on a fare this low...$20. In return they're awarding you nearly 3,000 miles, or 1/8 of a free ticket. The variable cost of that...meaning the fuel cost to move your ... from point A-B when you do redeem a ticket, is worth at least that same $20..their contribution....making their $200 completly un-profitable

Frankly, if this 40% were to stop flyig US Air, I would suggest it represents maybe 10-15% of their revenue and maybe 20% of their expense, based on the Dividen mile redemption.

Additionally, if they cut out the most un-profitable 40% of their fliers, they'll also free up that much of their fleet as well, which can be re-leased or re-sold for more cash.

They just can't afford to give away free flights and perks for yields that are un-profitable to begin with.

In my eyes, it's a good move to go about saving the company.

The difference is that airlines deal with repeat customers. We don't buy just 1 ticket, we buy many tickets.

Try to squeeze a repeat customer for maximum profits once, and you'll find the next sale much harder to make.

Another point that your missing and US exects obviously miss. OK, lets suppose its a breakeven situation with the FFs low fare flights. The point is that we DO fly full fares, just not ALL full fares. Wouldn't take 10 break even flights for 1 whopping $2,000 profit flight? So really if you average out when we fly discounts and fulls they ARE making money, lots of money on us. We are consitent and predictable. You can look at us flight by flight, ala the term FREQUENT flyer.

Frankly, and you and anyone else has to admit. This airline gurus haven't really done a very good job with any of the airlines right? They are all swimming in pools of billions of dollars of debt. Most are right on the cusp of filing bankruptcy anyway. That doesn't sound like the recipe of a success story to me.

If anything, I'd say these execs are worried about one thing. Maintaining THEIR personal multi-million dollar salaries and bonuses at the cost of everything and anything.

I know that is difficult to believe in this new world of lilly white ethics in corporate America...but thats just my opinion.

I have to disagree. I took several mileage runs last Fall in anticipation of taking the family on a holiday this summer. On all of the flights I took, there were plenty of empty seats. My "cheap" ticket was not preventing a higher paying passengers from flying. The true cost of transporting me was a tiny fraction of what they earned from my ticket. If I had not gone on those mileage runs, the airline would have lost even more money!

Several things to also note: My frequent flyer miles that I got from those flights were used for free tickets but these seats were capacity controlled. Just becuase flights look full does not mean every passenger is a revenue passenger.

I have always heard that the full fare passengers that account for 10 to 15 percent of the passenger load account for no more than 35% of the total revenue. I realize that is still a large chunk but to say mileage runners do not help the bottom line is absurd.

Tango: The prblem was not that you were preventing a higher paying passenger from paying for your seat. It's that the airline still had to fly the plane, at a huge expense, ersus the minimal revenue they brought in for it.

I believe part of this plan, is that they need to cut routes and aircraft as well, and keep the highest yielding, profitable ones.

My question is, if you don't buyt that $200 ticket now, because you don't like this decision to dis-continue point earnings on this fare class, is the airline better off. I think the answer is yes....it's additional justification to cancel the flight, and permanently dis-continue it....if other act the way you have and take your un-profitable business to another airline.

I don't deny that the airlines are run ...-back ward in many cases. Another lesson I learned in business school was that the easiest way to identify your dumbest competitor was to look for the one who competes on price...in the US airline industry, that means almost everyone. The industry needs to fix its pricing issues. $200 fares in many cases are impossible to make profitable.

MARCUSSPRAT: I agree that many flyers provide many different average yields. I think the point I ws trying to make, is that in US Airways case, an effective way to stop the bleeding, is to try and identify your most un-profitable segment of customers, and'FIRE' them essentially.

I once worked for a profitable airline, and we did the exact same thing. We called it account cohart management. We analyzed average yields of our largest custmers, and if they didn't meet the mark, we made a conscious decision to raise their rates to profitable levels. If they walked, they walked....didn't matter because the company was better for it.

This strategy may have a few profitable customers within...some $200 yields also buy full fares...but for the most part, I think they've done a good job at identifying an un-profitable segment, and taking appropriate action

Just my thoughts

I still think UA Air will back off from this mess.

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~ Glen ~ Calling all United 1K flyers - please join .. www.1Kflyers.com

US's moves make sense IF you look at each passenger group as monolithic, i.e. Full Fare pax always buy full fare, discount pax always buy discount.

In my position, some of my trips are planned way in advance and some of the trips are booked the day before. So, am I a blood-sucking discount flyer or a Full Fare savior? US will never know.

I fly on behalf of a large corporation and can choose whichever airline I want. If the fares are within 100-150 $ I tend to choose CO. My second choice is DL. If neither of those is available, I tend to go for WN or HP. I will pay a little more for elite perks, but I would have to justify to my boss why I paid hundreds more. I dont think US can be more WN than WN. They have too much of an advantage. Just ask Kmart. I suspect this is just one more step on the road to Ch. 7.

In my opinion, US has an enviable position on the East Coast. How they manage to continually screw it up escapes me. They have one trick and one trick only, buy their competitors. It will be an interesting case study to see how their moves play out.

I, for one, am not that worried about all airlines following their moves. At least one of the majors will position themselves as a carrier for pax in my situation, I just hope it's not AArrogant AAirlines.