eponymous_coward

There's also not much A (award F) inventory.

Good thing I booked and flew my farewell on VX F (ORD-LAX-SEA) already...

GrayAnderson

Yet another example of MP being inferior in form to Elevate...

Repooc17

Do we know which route will get to be the final VX flight?

sfozrhfco

The last real VX flight has long since departed. One of my last 2 flights on VX by AS again had the dish live TV stations disabled. On the other the F class flight attendant did not even tell people to stow their bags in F or collect the predeparture drinks. Big ol’ bag on the floor for take off in the window seat in row 2. The guy next to me had his predeparture drink collected more than half way through the flight.

Just used the last of my points points for a one way at the end of this month. Bought the other way on another carrier. Won’t miss the death by 1000 cuts on what is left of VX.

CDKing

Well the points were harder to earn and no free instant upgrade certs so how is this example of MP being inferior to Elevate?

GrayAnderson

Last-seat availability being a thing is, well, a good thing. Pre-merger (and with the credit card), piling up 13 points/dollar meant that I was actually doing far better than I would under MVP Gold in MP in most cases (I've digressed on the math, but basically if I end up on a paid F trip between now and 12/31 I'd have to have a hole in my brain to even consider crediting to MP instead of Elevate...IIRC a hypothetical one-way, even without CC credit going to Elevate, would run me something like twice as many MP miles via Elevate as if I brought them in directly). I will say that the deal they had going with VS, while somewhat limited, was very much a sweetheart partnership: I don't think it's going to be easy to reliably bag a fees-only trip to Europe for every $3000 in spend. (Edit: The VA partnership was in a similar category: Tricky to utilize but also beautiful when it did come together.)

Also, I was able to plausibly earn Gold on VX whereas I'd have to tie myself in a knot to get MVP Gold due to the reasonably hard link with mileage. IIRC on VX I was able to do that with about 3 paid TCON trips/year plus credit card use, whereas if I'm not mistaken on AS it'd take me somewhere around six or seven such trips (and since I'm on the East Coast and AS has mostly killed off both their DL and AA partnerships going forward, running what travel I have on the East Coast through MP via them is basically no joy).

As I think I said somewhere, I consider there to be a difference between upgrade certs and unlimited comp-ups. The former I appreciate (in something resembling fixed quantity, at least); the latter I actively dislike...but that's my VX-induced WFBF mentality speaking (basically, what you're saying with randomly comping someone else into F alongside me for reasons other than operations is that the better accommodations "up front" are only worth customer goodwill...VX, at least, put a base price tag on it).

Edit: So, I ran the math. At the moment I'm VX Gold (and with it, MVP Gold on AS). Here are the relevant earning calculations:
Mileage Plan:
-100% base mileage
-75% class-of-service bonus
-100% status bonus
Total: 275% of miles traveled (per my understanding, only base mileage gets the bonus)

Elevate:
-5 miles per fare dollar base
-6 miles per fare dollar status bonus
-Multiply by 1.3 for conversion
Total: 14.3 miles per fare dollar

Taking a hypothetical DCA-SEA trip, let's do two routings:
DCA-DAL-LAX-SEA: 3374 miles
Mileage Plan earning: 9278.5 miles
Mileage Plan/Elevate break-even: $648.85

DCA-SFO-SEA: 3118 miles
Mileage Plan earning: 8574.5 miles
Mileage Plan/Elevate break-even: $599.62

I'm pretty sure that a DCA-SFO-SEA fare does not exist at that level outside of a specialized sale even before taxes and fees. Ditto the DCA-DAL-LAX-SEA fare (which you often had to force). The lowest I can find a few weeks out (via ITA Matrix) is a fare of $702 (for same-day travel, at least; I can get $600 with an overnight stay or two wedged in, but I think that's mostly outside of what we're looking at) on a total cost of $782. FWIW this would be even bloodier if I still had the VX credit card (since you're probably adding a point per dollar net of the AS credit card).

As a fair disclosure, a few of the flight options listed do involve an LAX-SFO leg, so the mileage above might actually end up a bit higher (DCA-DAL-SFO-LAX-SEA shows up a few times) and in some of those cases? Yes, MP might end up ahead if you can somehow combine that with a low fare. But these are very much edge cases which probably involve getting an agent to beat the computer system up, and at the $1000 fare level I'm generally expecting to pay for this sort of trip Mileage Plan falls so short that it's actually kind of tragic to see Alaska pushing anyone to credit a paid F leg this way.

Finally, I did spot where the disconnect comes from: Mileage Plan offers 150% of crediting for top-bucket Main Cabin and Main Cabin Select, but only 175% for First. Considering the normal price gap there, that is almost facepalm-worthy. It would be one thing if that were for "discount First" (there's a split between F/P and A/G elsewhere), but it isn't.

socalgecko

Right now, the latest departures on the VX schedule for 4/24 are LAX-SFO & SFO-LAX at 9:30p, but both show as being "unavailable" for purchase on the VX site.

jimmygottfredson

Ding ding ding - winner winner

eponymous_coward

Technically, AS has last seat F availability (A is discounted award F, they will happily sell you last seat for 60k miles).

If there were scads of people buying F DCA/LGA-DAL-SFO/LAX like you were, AS wouldn't be flying a bunch of E75s on the route now. For that matter, the VX angel investors wouldn't have wanted to cash out to AS if VX's F product was selling like hotcakes.

The number of airlines that go "let's make less money by getting rid of a product that sells really well" is about zero.

I guess that's the real tragedy here: great F product (best in class in the US on short or midhaul, competitive on transcon until the last few years when flatbeds took over). Not enough people want to pay for it in the end. There's a reason why WN (zero F seats) ate up marketshare from airlines that used to serve Chateaubriand JFK-DEN.

Both of my last VX flights had the Dish Live TV stations working. The service was fine; no bags on the floor. PDBs collected before takeoff. Sorry you got the short end of the stick while I, a cheap AS interloper (who's never paid full freight for VX F in his life), did not.