joshua362

Tried to book a RR flight for the first time in a while for a business trip. Used to be a very enjpyable process. Now, nothing is available except odd routings (3 stops) and 6am flights. Forget Mondays or Fridays.

ISP-MCI is not exactly a glamorous city pair.

Figures that I just signed up for a bunch of SW cards to build up credits and have shifted my travel from ATL to SW destinations.

Have things really dried up this bad, this quick? Not saying there aren't flights but nothing a business traveler could use.

darthbimmer

Getting award seats on WN is not as easy as before, but it's still way better than on the legacies. I recently looked at a few possible award trips 2-4 weeks out and found that most WN flights were still available, even on Friday and Monday. I checked two legacy carriers for awards seats for the same trips, and both had nothing available at the saver award level.

sdsearch

Yes, but they had something at the "standard" (non-saver) award level, right?

Meanwhile, Southwest has no such thing as a non-saver award level, so in that sense (if you have plenty of credits) it does you no good that you could spend more credits, while at least at a legacy you have the choice of spending more or not using an award.

nsx

Double mileage awards are tightening up as well. Delta just announced that SkyChoice will no longer give you any seat starting December 1. Northwest apparently did the same some time ago.

I expect legacy double mileage awards to become comparable to today's normal awards on Southwest. Let's hope that Southwest doesn't tighten its availability further as the other airlines spiral downward.

If any airlines sell their mileage programs in IPOs, I won't be buying. If there's one thing worse than accumulating depreciating miles, it's buying stock in a doomed business.

SAPMAN

This is a good point -- BUT are legacies (and if WN adopts, will they) reducing the number of Saver Awards to push people into Non-Savers (cost about double?)?

I think WN could get more Awards used up with Double Awards as long as any seat other than Fully Refundable is left. But the fear is they will cut back on Standard to force people to use the Double. And I do not know that there are that many flights where one would want to pay Double (equivalent of $500 value) unless Awards were expiring soon.

Also with Legacies, you cannot buy a cheapie ticket and and cancel (and still have funds available for future) if an Award becomes available.

nsx

I believe that legacies WANT people to choose from the absurdly limited Saver inventory or, preferably, give up and pay for a ticket. I don't think legacies like the rise in redemptions of double mileage awards. I think they believe they LOSE money when people redeem double mileage awards. Thus the change, to limit that loss.

wanaflyforless

I agree the legacies want to keep redemption at the double level to minimum, as they see these awards as displacing revenue. I am not sure the stronger (and bigger) mileage programs, AA and UA, are going to follow the DL and NW change though.

IMO legacy miles are still much more valualbe that WN credits. I consisently can get where I need to go with them between alliances and partnerships. I usually have to do the work myself to find the seats then call to redeem but I can consistently get msyelf to between expensive city pairs, both domestic and international, using legacy miles. WN awards seem to never be worth more than $300 max. But 25K miles can get me from SPI to YVR or CID-GGG.

If you only ever want to travel between major markets in the US then you may rightly value WN credits higher. I like to buy those cheap tickets in the major markets then redeem for those expensive minor market tickets I need.

In my experience WN capacity controls are worse than legacy capacity controls: With the partnerships I am more often able to redeem legacy miles for a given route versus WN credits.

darthbimmer

Not that I would have wanted to use it. On the routes I was checking, I could have bought a ticket for $400 on various different airlines, including WN. I regard $400 as a good value for a WN award, marginal value for a legacy saver award, and a terrible value for a legacy anytime award.

I've seen this pattern over and over in the past year while booking awards trips. WN awards seats are at least as plentiful as legacy anytime seats -- often much more so -- yet are as easy to earn as saver awards in most legacy programs.

JRF

The LUV is gone, or at least leaving the company very fast. The fun is following right behind it. A once great airlines is now quickly heading to be just like the rest.

suranyi

My reason for flying WN was never because I thought they were better than than the legacies in any way. It was simply because, for certain kinds of trips, their combination of price and schedule best fit my needs. That was true in the past, it's still true right now, and as far as I can tell that will still be true into the near future.

Ed

JRF

I don't think my crustal ball is agreeing with you, but it has been known to be wrong before. Only time will tell and new boarding procedures will soon let us have some insight.

nsx

I recently took a targeted web survey for Southwest. In the process of rating the various decision factors, I realized just how small a factor the frequent flyer program is compared to schedule, price, and on-time performance. The FF program is a tie-breaker and not much more than that. This is why Herb K. resisted starting a FF program for many years, and it's why we may face serious cutbacks in RR. Devaluations per se are impossible with RR, in that credits cannot be banked for use years later.

JRF

Well for me RR played a key role in my formula. It was so easy to earn free tickets on WN by flying from BWI to ALB and those other short hops, then use the free ticket to fly from BWI to LAX. Seats were easy to get and I went out of the way to fly on WN. Prior to that, I would go out of the way to fly on DL as I used the freebees for INTL upgrades. After DL destroyed their FF program (along with most of the others) I pretty much flew all my domestic on WN. When WN killed the FF program, I still flew 75% of of my flights with them, but over time I have drifted. I still prefer WN but not sure I will with the new seating system now how I think WN is headed.

The FF program is important to me, but not enough to cause me not to fly WN in general, but it does play into the formula.

cabinpressure

RR is obviously much worse than it used to be due to capacity controls and elimination of double credit, but their availability has been much better than legacy airlines in my experience. No problems finding DTW-LAX flights at reasonable times of day for a Monday-to-Friday trip. Couldn't find anything on NW, CO, or DL. One issue may be that some legacy award tickets still require a Saturday night stay for the "saver" awards. And WN lets you book one-way awards for half the cost of a round-trip award, which none of the legacies will let you do, AFAIK.

pshuang

No, several of the legacies do (e.g., Alaska, Delta), though I think many indeed do not, so one-way awards cannot be assumed to be available.