uschpr

Deborah Thompson was on a LGW-CLT flight with me once... sitting across the aisle from me in Envoy

CPRich

I saw Seth in the PIT club a few years back, after his reign, and boarded a flight with him.

Frankly, I don't have a problem with airline employees/execs getting perks in their own company. A friend of mine works for an auto manufacturer and bought his car at something like 10% below invoice. I have no problem with that. His company's execs get a company car at no cost. Neither I nor he has a problem with that either.

ClueByFour

Give them 10 points off the lowest fare they can find. That's the same deal.

I'll bet your friend at the auto manufacturer does not get a free car, or a Caddy Escalade for the price of a Chevy Trailblazer.



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Saving the world, one clue at a time.

TomBascom

Car companies don't extend free cars to all employees, their familes and their buddies (they are pretty free with discounts though... although even there there are limits -- something like 2 per family per year.) And car company execs don't blame all of their problems on customers who buy Geos instead of Caddies.

Discounts and perks I can support. I want Dave and Ben to sit in F, see the pen marks, drink from plastic cups and sweat out that Monday morning upgrade from a V ticket.

I also want them to understand that real businesses have real customers who are sensitive to the costs of travel. I want them to actually buy tickets. With real money -- or at least with their own credit card. It's ok if they get reimbursed but they should have to answer for that ticket to someone whose job is to keep costs under control.

I want Dave to have to budget for crew members that commute as if they had to buy tickets like I do. Then he'd understand the impact of last minute changes. He'd also realize that last minute changes are part of the real world. And he might even be upset if a crew couldn't be somewhere to fly an aircraft because they couldn't get approval for the $1,000 walk up fare to get from PHL to PIT.

The "flight privileges for all" mentality really messes up employee and executive understanding of the customer experience. Employees, in particular, are being terribly misled about the value of their flight privileges. IMHO they've seriously overvalued that aspect of their relationship with their employer. A nasty side-effect of that is that many of them think that the product is actually worth $1/mile and that we're ripping them off when we don't pay that.

You don't see auto-workers opining that customers should pay $50k for a Geo or a Focus and be happy to have the opportunity.