Originally Posted by raehl311 (Post 11134896)

You almost never want to frustrate customers.

Originally Posted by raehl311 (Post 11134896)

$4,000 on deeply discounted fares is still $4,000. If the airline didn't want to sell those fares at those prices, then it wouldn't price them that way - but the fact is, in order to pay to move the planes around, the airline needs nearly full planes. And a plane full of passengers on K fares is better than a plane with 4 people who paid $7k any day of the week.

See: Southwest. Low fares, but full planes.


If you can count on a passenger to regularly fill a seat on your plane at the prices you are charging, that's a good thing. Is it as good as a passenger who pays $7,000 for one seat? No, but you're not going to keep an airline afloat with those types of passengers alone.

Originally Posted by humanoid94 (Post 11135096)

For what it is worth, this was just confirmed over on the DL board.

Originally Posted by bigbird090 (Post 11134076)

has someone seriously not thought that perhaps they will start giving out only partial EQMs for discount fare classes?

Originally Posted by MikeMpls (Post 11135638)

That's very much in our thoughts. Delta tried that in 2001 but had to back off by 2004 after SaveSkyMiles had extracted sufficient penalty. A bit over a year ago JeffBob did indeed signal that reduced EQM's for discounted fares were again under consideration.

Originally Posted by humanoid94 (Post 11132296)

Reading the NW and DL forums is like watching a train wreck. This particular change is completely irrational... Perhaps DL management has some grand vision for the FF program of the future, but they are completely botching the implementaton.

Originally Posted by humanoid94 (Post 11135688)

Are the people that own Saveskymiles still on Flyertalk? I think that domain is going to have to be dusted off again. Looks like DL is giving a go at what they failed to accomplish in 2001.

Originally Posted by MikeMpls (Post 11136354)

RP owns SaveSkyMiles.com

Originally Posted by raehl311 (Post 11134884)

I really do think this is just a simple matter of the airlines realizing:

I doubt many people buy a B or Y fare because of the 50% bonus. Why give 50% bonus miles when you could make that person use a credit card from a bank that buys EQM off you for cash at 100% margin?

Originally Posted by troyintn (Post 11136352)

The only thing I can think of is they will spin it off ASAP. If not the FF program will not be worth much.

Originally Posted by Klm is Dead - Long Live KLM (Post 11135506)

There have been some very interesting discussions taking place that there are in fact a number of specific circumstance when you actually DO want to frustrate customers. When you have a group of customers who are not making a profitable contribution or worse who are actually taking money from you. (See you WSJ article on Best Buy)


I agree with you -- you need all those different customer segments with customers paying the highest yield that you can extract from them while filling the plane as full as you can. However, that doesn't mean you need to incentivize everyone or base incentives on a simplistic measure such as miles. Instead airlines can differentiate incentives -- and increasingly are. Airlines who have been moving to 25% mileage earning as the standard on competitive economy tickets have been doing better in the market than those whose programs offer 100% mileage. DLNW not only see this, but are now part of the same virtual company that is moving in this direction. After all, when full fare economy is earning more mileage than discounted business class (125%), you know changes are on the way.