How Cities Rank (FF Members)
 

In this month's TWA Ambassador magazine there is a page of lists of "Studies that show: How Cities Rank." In the category, Most Frequent Flyer Program Members, the ranking goes as follows:

San Francisco
West Palm Beach, Fla.
Seattle/Tacoma (Yep!!)
San Diego
Dallas-Fort Worth

It looks to me like those in the East and Northeast better get on the ball (or with the program as it were)!! Any ideas why this might be??



[This message has been edited by TravelWeary (edited 08-11-1999).]

Is that for TWA's FF program or all FF programs? If just TWA, it probably corresponds to some of their hubs.

MileKing:

Good question. No, this referred to any frequent flyer program.

Being a Washingtonian the other lists of interest that Seattle made were:
- Most Independent Bookstores (#4)
- Most Internet Access (#3)
- Highest Travel Taxes (Hotels, Rental
Cars, Restaurants)(#3)
- Best Cycling (#4)
- Best Arts (#4)

I don't know how they can measure that. Either they have to take a small sample and extrapolate from that, or they have to aggregate all the FF programs counting some (who belong to one program) people once but others (who belong to many programs) multiple times. Statistically I'd have to think that cities with the largest populations (NY, LA) should figure prominently.

[This message has been edited by pgupta011 (edited 08-11-1999).]

Funny you should mention that. This month's enRoute (the inflight mag for Air Canada) has an article making total fun of the whole idea of ranking cities.

That's really counter intuitive isn't it?

For what it's worth here a my guesses.

Are you sure that they are not talking about a percent -- ie San Fran has the biggest percent of FFs of any city population. This actually does make sense then because all the listed cities are pretty affluent and highly educated.

My other (kinda off the wall) answer is that the cities listed (with the exception of West Palm Beach -- talk about a biazarre answer to what city has the most FFs) Is they are major second tier cities of business and people travel from those cities to NYC, LA, etc more offen than people from LA, NYC, etc travel to San Fran, Seattle and so forth

silverpie - I myself make fun of the notion of ranking countries, cities, FF programs, etc.

My semi-educated guess regarding WPB (% of FF members to general population) is that there is a large number of retirees that live in and around WPB. As the majority of these folks are from 'somewhere else', it stands to reason that they would fly 'home' on a regular basis; thus joining a FF program makes sense for the majority of those people living in the WPB area.

Cheers,

'toad

DBK

I fly tons (from SEA) and the first time I will fly into LAX this year is to meet up at the RCC for the Pre-PIP Party. The only time last year was to go through customs on my way to Mexico. I do, however, go to Washington D.C. and Florida fairly often and NYC whenever I get the chance.

There is, on the other hand, massive air traffic between SFO and SEA (all the techies you know).

A Mileage Plus agent once told me that the West Coast has a far greater percentage of PremEx and 1K fliers. She thought it was because we have to fly so darn far to get anywhere. We get roughly 5,000 qualification miles for virtually any trip to the east coast so it adds up a lot faster than for a flyer say from Detroit who gets only 500 mile a segment to visit over 50% of the population of the United States.

[This message has been edited by Punki (edited 08-12-1999).]

And UA has such a strong presence in CA and the west coast along with having more Asian routes than all US carriers other than NW.

Among many silly rankings, this one sure appears to be a duzzy! Just my 0.02 worth!

Maybe we should start our own survey for our three favorite cities.

Let me start a thread on this on Gen. Traveltalk...