Airlines And Service

[usairways_vote_NO]

Speaking of which, I will be completely forthright regarding my own choice of airline. (UVN, please forgive the plethora of "I's" that are to follow...)

I also know of many tricks to improve my odds of sitting in F on coach tickets.

[post="256947"][/post]​

Forgiven as long as it is the exception not the rule.

By the way do you know the trick of reclining further if stuck in coach or in F for that matter. <_<

 

[whlinder]

I was thinking the very same thing as I read his comment. It amused me to no end to see your response only seconds later.

[post="256926"][/post]​

I try to provide something worthwhile to this message board, even if it is extremely rare.

I never answered UVN's original question that started this thread. Now is as good as any time.

How about the FF's rank your priorities as far as picking an airline and more specifically define what good service is to you. Please you have your chance to tell the employees of the airline of your choice what is important to you. Let them know.

I'm not a FF anymore, but I used to be, with top status on AS and Premier on UA.
Nowadays my priorities for picking an airline is to pick whoever provides me the most value, maximizing the utility of my money.

I get more value out of the following:
-flying from IAD as I can park for free and it is the most convenient airport to me. After IAD I have get more value flying out of DCA than BWI as I can park at my parent's house and have someone drive me over to the airport.
-flying nonstop.
-earning rewards that are useful/valuable.
-comfort. I am tall so this is important.
-entertainment. I won't pay more for it but it will break a tie when all other factors are the same.
-price, of course. I don't like to spend money I don't have to.

Those are pretty standard for most travellers anymore, though the common passenger might not care about the rewards. However I do have some non-revving benefits so I also have to weigh the ability to have a confirmed seat for more money vs. saving money and flying stand-by.

A couple of examples:
Buying similarly priced tickets on YX to fly DCA-MCI instead of on UA out of IAD in an RJ or US out of DCA, sacrificing more valuable miles and a convenient airport for a 717 with all F seats.

Buying a ticket on FlyI to SAV because it was $50 cheaper than UA. And because I wanted to try them out.

Non-revving to SEA as it saved a lot of money. The middle seat on the outbound flight in the last row of coach wasn't fun but the F seat on the way back was!

Back when I had status, comfort was very important and I would pay a little extra for it, but with proper planning I always had an F seat or an Economy plus seat or an exit row seat. The worst seat I ever had on AS as an MVP Gold was when my wife and I had the window and middle of the exit row and someone else had the aisle. Everything else was either exit row with a middle empty or in F. AS even upgraded us on an award ticket once. Those were the days. But I understood they weren't making any $$ off me and AS changed their upgrade program to one that makes a lot more sense revenue-wise for them. But if there was a real cheap fare I would take another airline, like when I paid $113 RT for SEA-DCA on TW. Luckily I snagged exit row seats for that trip too.

As for what good service is, I don't really expect much, just for the employees to do their jobs and not be rude about it. I expect the airline to know fare rules and the contract of carriage because I sure as hell will know them for whoever I am flying and whatever the rules to my ticket are. I will understand that $h!t happens but I expect you and the airline to do whatever you can to fix the problem.

 

[TomBascom]

THat's true, they do. But when a company tries to tweak the program, the cockroach club is formed.

So?

Back in the mid 80's, when I travelled all the time, my company gave me the freedom to select a 'preferred' carrier, with a couple of caveats. I lived in Dallas, and I travelled extensively to the Southeast. I had a shitload of miles and status on Delta, so they were my 'preferred carrier'. But if competing airlines had a fare within $50 of Delta's fare, no problem. But if there was a $100 difference, then I wasn't flying Delta. Company rule. FF program status be damned - the company's bottom line ruled the day.

Adjust that slightly for inflation and I'll bet we aren't all that far apart. The main difference is probably that back then airlines hadn't figured out that upgrades work better than miles for impacting the behavior of VFFs.

... And back then, I guess I just wasn't a prima donna traveller who was on at least two flights every week...I didn't expect anything in return from Delta other than a seat on a plane and a smile.

They didn't promise you anything else. That is no longer the case. Times have changed and there's no going back -- FF programs aren't going to be rolled back any more than LCCs are going to go away.

If they said they were going to get rid of their FF program, life would have gone on.

[post="256836"][/post]​

That was then. This is now. It won't happen so there's no point wasting energy fretting about it. Or not fretting about it.

 

[KCFlyer]

So?
Adjust that slightly for inflation and I'll bet we aren't all that far apart. The main difference is probably that back then airlines hadn't figured out that upgrades work better than miles for impacting the behavior of VFFs.
They didn't promise you anything else. That is no longer the case. Times have changed and there's no going back -- FF programs aren't going to be rolled back any more than LCCs are going to go away.
That was then. This is now. It won't happen so there's no point wasting energy fretting about it. Or not fretting about it.

[post="256983"][/post]​

Tom...yep...that was the 80's. Then they were tweaked in the 90's. Today, they are in financial straits, oil is $55 a barrel, and they are losing money hand over fist. As the programs were modified for the go-go 90's, isn't it time that they were modified for the "Omigod, we're almost bankrupt" 2000's?

 

[Hope777]

Going back to my post #11, The flight was ON-TIME, a A319 that had two F/A's standing there talking while no one else was even boarding. I think, better yet I know that either of them could have offered something to drink and had it picked up prior to pushback. And oh, did I mention that the Crew was JUST STARTING their day? Poor Service, plain and simple.

 

[TomBascom]

Tom...yep...that was the 80's. Then they were tweaked in the 90's.

I don't think it was mere "tweaking". They matured in very important ways.

Today, they are in financial straits, oil is $55 a barrel, and they are losing money hand over fist.

Oil goes up and oil goes down. Airlines lose money (and occasionally make it) hand over fist pretty regularly. What's special now is that there has been a permanent change in the competitive landscape.

As the programs were modified for the go-go 90's, isn't it time that they were modified for the "Omigod, we're almost bankrupt" 2000's?

[post="256984"][/post]​

Sure, there could be changes. I'm a customer -- I'm coming from the POV of "these are the things that are valuable to me; do them well and I'll spend my money with you". Make changes that are compatible with my desires and I'm happy. If the airline wants to be something else then that is their choice -- they can do that and that's fine. I'll get over it and go somewhere else that better matches my needs. I'd prefer not to do that and I think that it's worth some of my time to try and convince US Airways not to chase me off. (There's some saying about a customer who is still talking to you is still a customer...)

You're probably chomping at the bit to say something about the cockroaches forming as soon as the airline tried to make changes... Again -- so what? We're customers and we decided to express our unhappiness. That's normal. It happens all the time in plenty of markets. Had BBB gotten off his butt and done some actual market research with actual customers and maybe even spent a bit of time flying his own airline and understanding his customers he'd have known it wouldn't work and he might have come up with something that could have saved the airline. Instead he made the customers the enemy at the worst possible time.

 

[KCFlyer]

Tom...In a nutshell...the problem I have with the cockroaches and the FFUCOS group is this - Bob already cited how he flew a money losing $259 round trip from BWI-DFW...in FIRST. He has said that 'creative travel planning' allows him to do this quite often. Why on earth would an airline want to reward THAT kind of behaviour? Why was there such an outcry from the roach society when they tried to "incentivize" the VFF's to pay a profitable fare for them in return for full benefits of the program? What is wrong with that? Y'all view a good customer as one who flies an airline a lot. But a good customer is someone who flies the airline a lot...and pays a profitable fare.

 

[JayBrian]

Tom...In a nutshell...the problem I have with the cockroaches and the FFUCOS group is this - Bob already cited how he flew a money losing $259 round trip from BWI-DFW...in FIRST. He has said that 'creative travel planning' allows him to do this quite often. Why on earth would an airline want to reward THAT kind of behaviour? Why was there such an outcry from the roach society when they tried to "incentivize" the VFF's to pay a profitable fare for them in return for full benefits of the program? What is wrong with that? Y'all view a good customer as one who flies an airline a lot. But a good customer is someone who flies the airline a lot...and pays a profitable fare.

[post="257055"][/post]​

It's not money losing if the alternative was to fly an empty seat on Bob's flight. We shouldn't confuse the the unit cost per passenger vs. the marginal cost of carrying the next passenger.

 

[ELP_WN_Psgr]

It's not money losing if the alternative was to fly an empty seat on Bob's flight. We shouldn't confuse the the unit cost per passenger vs. the marginal cost of carrying the next passenger.

But it IS money losing if the passenger who might have purchased a Y fare is able, instead, to buy a QE21XYZ for twelve bucks and three empty aluminum cans.

Nobody has figured out that Blofares (or Omigod fares, or whatever you wish to call them...the $477 one way flights on 200 mile routes) are totally diversionary in that they put people in their automobiles or they put them doing whatever they have to to get a cheaper fare. Nobody will buy it.

I don't guess anyone will ever know, for certain, if that seat will have gone empty if the carrier hadn't sold it for an el cheapo price. I am pretty sure that this is where the pricing model is really broken.

Three days before departure the choice ought to be full fare or the highway, and the full fare should not be something to make the average fare-paying person shriek with rage and disbelief and horror. Instead, what you have are carriers out there hawking leftover seats at whatever pittance they can get for them. There is no incentive for anyone to ever buy a Y ticket, when flying the legacy carriers, because the truth in nobody does...because nobody has to. Just hang around the internet andsee what they will come up with.

 

[KCFlyer]

So if we follow your twisted logic it means I should offer the guy as the gas station more money than the posted price out of my concern over the profitability of the Gas Station?

Who published that alledged "Money Losing fare"? NOT ME! Should I offer Albertson 's MORE for the pound of butter that they have for their "Loss Leader" price?

US Airways makes the rules AND the fares. NOT ME! If I take advantage of them that means I'm a savy consumer. Also you have to look at the totality of the monies expensed. Average the $259 fare for a 3,400 mile trip and the $800.00 fare for a 247 mile trip to BUF. So $1,059 combined for 3,900 miles of travel works out to 27 cents per seat mile. So I think I'm carrying my weight. Next Please.

[post="257072"][/post]​

Okay Bob...let's try this one. Your company makes widgets, two styles...the regular widget and the premium widget. The cost to produce the widget is regular $970, and the cost to provide the premium widget is $1,050. The widget business is highly competitive, so the price the regular widget at $1,000 and the premium widget at $1,150. I phone up the company and tell them I want to order 10,000 widgets, but the most I will pay is $900 per widget. On top of that, since I am such a big user of your widgets, I'll need the premium widgets, thank you very much. NOw...true enough, $900 for a widget that costs you $970 to produce is better than no widgets being sold at all, so you'll gladly sell them to me, right? OR...when your boss comes to you and says "Bob, we've got a helluva deal with KC going on, but to provide it, we've got to get costs down, so how about cutting your pay by 30%...after all, KC has all kinds of kudos about the service you provide". Sound good? I hope so, because it's what your asking of US Airways employees.

Your gas station analogy is wrong...what you want is to pay for regular, but get a comp upgrade to premium because you pump a lot of gas in your car.

FWIW...you posted that you flew US from BWI to DFW round trip for $276 AND got an upgrade to boot. That fare lost them money on a coach seat...and you flew in F. Yep...you took them up on their offer....and you flew in a premium seat to boot. But I guess it's all okay because you told the FA's and gate agents what a tremendous job they were doing, right?

 

[KCFlyer]

Not if they sold the coach seat to someone else.

If US Airways is dumb enough to charge less for a product than it costs to deliver that is NOT a PineyBob problem.

That I enjoy the service I recieve then a thank you is appropriate.

US Airways doesn't hold a gun to my head forcing me to fly them. I do not hold a gun to their head telling them what to charge or how to handle their DM program.

Like any good business person I try to leverage the transaction to my advantage. And through Onerous & Obfuscatory rules US Airways seeks to leverage the transaction to their advantage. I don't see the issue frankly.

If you can't plan your schedule to allow you to take advantage of the fare and upgrade opportunities that exist is NOT a PineyBob problem.

[post="257084"][/post]​

My goodness...all these third person references make me feel like I'm talking to Bob Dole. But...I highlighted one part of your post - That one highlighted line there is utter bullshit...why was the cockroach club formed? Because you felt like holding a gun to their head and told them how to handle their DM program. The fact that they changed it went straight to your head, as though Piney Bob was the agent of change.

 

[JS]

Okay Bob...let's try this one. Your company makes widgets, two styles...the regular widget and the premium widget. The cost to produce the widget is regular $970, and the cost to provide the premium widget is $1,050. The widget business is highly competitive, so the price the regular widget at $1,000 and the premium widget at $1,150. I phone up the company and tell them I want to order 10,000 widgets, but the most I will pay is $900 per widget. On top of that, since I am such a big user of your widgets, I'll need the premium widgets, thank you very much. NOw...true enough, $900 for a widget that costs you $970 to produce is better than no widgets being sold at all, so you'll gladly sell them to me, right? OR...when your boss comes to you and says "Bob, we've got a helluva deal with KC going on, but to provide it, we've got to get costs down, so how about cutting your pay by 30%...after all, KC has all kinds of kudos about the service you provide". Sound good? I hope so, because it's what your asking of US Airways employees.

Your gas station analogy is wrong...what you want is to pay for regular, but get a comp upgrade to premium because you pump a lot of gas in your car.

FWIW...you posted that you flew US from BWI to DFW round trip for $276 AND got an upgrade to boot. That fare lost them money on a coach seat...and you flew in F. Yep...you took them up on their offer....and you flew in a premium seat to boot. But I guess it's all okay because you told the FA's and gate agents what a tremendous job they were doing, right?

[post="257079"][/post]​

Both of your analogies are wrong because they do not involve businesses with enormous sunk costs. Sell one less widget today, and you can likely sell it tomorrow instead. Same for gasoline -- it can sit there in the tank for a long time. Airlines are different, and if yield management thinks that they are better off dumping seats for $276 instead of $1,000, they will do it.

Come on, Southwest does the same thing, just not with such extremes between the lowest and highest fare. Remember when Southwest used to have just two fares in any market -- peak and off-peak? Now you can pay $39 for a peak ticket or $92 for an off-peak ticket, and which one is available depends on seat availability at the time of purchase.

However, this has nothing to do with your constant hammering of the upgrade program. You continue to assume, falsely, that selling one ticket to PineyBob for $276 and giving him a First Class seat "costs" US Airways more money to provide than the $276.

In the aggregate, yes this is true, but in the aggregate, US has almost no control over revenue. The other airlines, most importantly the LCC, controls US Airways' revenue.

No airline, not even Southwest, can possibly charge each individual passenger the same way that you would price widgets or gasoline (anything physically manufactured with relatively low sunk costs). It simply does not work, no matter how many times you say it over and over.

What little control US does have is the order in which upgrades are given (as well as how many FF miles to award, how many award seats to make available, etc.) They attempted to drastically change the order of upgrades such that low-fare passengers got a zero chance for upgrading and had to scale that back after howling protests. However, they still reward full fare passengers with a better chance of upgrading than they do low fare passengers.

 

[KCFlyer]

You'll note that the operators of the "Turd Brown Bus" or new and improved "Toilet Bowl Blue Bus" don't think enough of their customers to engage them in dialogue.

[post="257097"][/post]​

If you mean they don't feed my ego, you may be right. But you CAN write letters. Let's see...customers wrote to say that they were tired of sharing a seat with a morbidly obese passenger, Southwest responds with their policy on "large" passengers. Took a lot of heat, too, but they stuck with it, thus satisfying the majority of their passengers who took time to write.

Customers wrote to say that they wished there was a better way for them to get their boarding card. Southwest responded with online checkin. But it was limited. Customers wrote to suggest ways to improve it, and they were adopted.

Those are just a couple. Nope, Herb never "invited" a group to his office to allow them to whine about no assigned seating. But they listen to their customers far better than management at most legacy carriers do.

 

[whlinder]

If US Airways is dumb enough to charge less for a product than it costs to deliver that is NOT a PineyBob problem.

[post="257084"][/post]​

I thought FFOCUS was Frequent Flyers Organized & Committed to US Airways Success? If you are committed to their success why aren't you helping them solve their pricing problems?

Ignore the fact that NO MAJOR Airline to date has had senior management meet with it's key customers. That will change soon when CO meets with some of its top elites.

Alaska has been taking their MVP Golds to lunch for years to meet with them.

You'll note that the operators of the "Turd Brown Bus" or new and improved "Toilet Bowl Blue Bus" don't think enough of their customers to engage them in dialogue.

[post="257097"][/post]​

You'll note that Southwest has been profitable for the last 30 years. You'll also note that WN flies more domestic passengers than anybody. Maybe they don't need to meet with their customers because they know what they are doing and know how to provide customer satisfaction?

Your spin is USA320-esque.

 

[KCFlyer]

Oh so it's whinning that I have a buying criteria that's different thatn yours? It's just the golden rule. I have the gold I make the rules! At least when it comes to what I purchase.

If I was US Airways Marketing, I'd pay whatever it took to have the show "Airline" that's on A & E run round the clock in both US hubs and select focus cities.

Give Ma & Pa Kettle a nice snapshot of the customer experience on the "Tiolet Bowl Blue & Turd Brown" is like.

[post="257145"][/post]​

Bob..If you write a letter to Herb Kellher or Gary Kelly or Colleen Barrett, that letter will get routed around the entire system. Southwest does that - every letter to execs, good or bad, gets routed around the system to give every employee the opportunity to see what their customers are saying about them. Even complaint letters from someone who has never flown them. The result of that is that when the employees see a lot of letters about a single issue, they can bring it up to managment and suggest ways to improve things. And the difference between Southwest and US is that Southwest managment actually listens to their employees. That system is far more powerful, and does a lot more to get problems and issues addressed than meeting in the corner office with a bunch of self important frequent flyers. Tell you what....when you've got a little spare time, why not cash in some miles and fly US to DFW. I'll buy you a ticket to HOU on Southwest...not so you can try them, but so that you can get thru security at DAL. I invite you to do a "Ma and Pa Kettle" count there in the middle of the week. I do have to say that Ma and Pa wear some pretty fancy suits and carry some really nice briefcases on their travels.

But...if US wanted to run A&E's Airline round the clock, all SWA needs to do is run a single loop of every major NEWS organizations coverage of PHL at Christmas. Don't know about you, but news shows tend to carry a bit more weight than something on a network called "Arts & Entertainment". Yee Haw Jethro....at least we've got our bags.

And yes, you have the gold, you make the rules. But I daresay that if you took less gold than was required to purchase a new car, the dealership would send you on your way rather than take a loss. Somehow, you don't expect the same from an airline.