It's a slow day so I'll take the bait...
Yes, you are bad. The entire success or failure of the company can hardly be laid at the feet of DM. Which is what you're attempting to do with this little piece of misdirection comparing DM to the entire bottom line. It's the same thing you do when you start in on the "unprofitable fare" mantra.
You're quite right that there is no line item in any of the financial data that isolates DM. There are, however, various penumbra and ephemera that can be tied together to shed some light on the subject. Page 66, paragraph "i" of the 2003 Annual Report is a good start:
We know from elsewhere in the report (page 13) that they value said trips at the incremental cost of that trip and, doing the math, that that works out to something less than $14/trip (6.2 million awards, $85M liability) or 0.05 cents per mile (figuring an award as a standard 25,000 mile award).
The quarterly cost of the liability the award redemption rate of 1.2M per equals 300,000 trips per quarter -- or about $4M in expense.
We also know from the August Quarterly Report (covering the quarter ending June 30 '04), page 13:
"Other" is listed on page 2 as $162 million. A $17 million revenue increase in a single quarter primarily due to "an increase in mileage credit sales" strongly suggests to me that they're making pretty good money on those sales. If "primarily" means "half or more" then we're looking at $8M.
In other words just the increase in sales, not even including the baseline sales, easily covers the expenses related to DM.
That sure looks like making money hand over fist to me.
That is not what I said. I said that SWA acts quite differently than you recommend US should act. There's a world of difference between those statements.
That's not a myth. That's just a report on their actions. And while inflamatory on this board it's just another bit of misdirection on your part.
The SWA mythology that legacy carriers, analysts, the press and laymen fall for time and time again has to do with the factors that suposedly make SWA successful. In many cases the myth has an underlying truth behind it but you have to get beyond the superficial characteristics if you want to leverage it successfully somewhere else. I think the carriers are finally starting to understand that. Some analysts get it too. The press is hopeless.
It's all about differentiation. Being "just like" DL or CO is as big a mistake as being "just like" SWA.
They haven't offered to do such a thing. If and when they do then I might think it is a good move -- quite a few of my tickets have been in the $1+/mile range. It depends, of course on how they approach it. The changes that were attempted in August of '02 were problematic in many ways. The threads on that topic were quite long and involved. Review them if you've forgotten.
You tell me. Who's complaining about that? It is one of the ways they keep the cost of redemption down. I understand it and I can work with it. I can think of ways to tweak the process for the better and I would encourage US to move towards a model closer to RR or SPG but it's a small thing.
If you're talking about upgrade inventory levels then I refer you to l4pi's post regarding your lack of understanding of the issues.
More power to them if they can actually sell them. GoFares in F are a wonderful thing. Selling seats is not incompatible with awards or upgrades.
As to your common "why complain" theme -- we're customers. We get to do that. We're the ones with the money that the company wants to extract from our pockets into their coffers. Every complaint is a gift...
KCFlyer said:
Yes, you are bad. The entire success or failure of the company can hardly be laid at the feet of DM. Which is what you're attempting to do with this little piece of misdirection comparing DM to the entire bottom line. It's the same thing you do when you start in on the "unprofitable fare" mantra.
You're quite right that there is no line item in any of the financial data that isolates DM. There are, however, various penumbra and ephemera that can be tied together to shed some light on the subject. Page 66, paragraph "i" of the 2003 Annual Report is a good start:
We know from elsewhere in the report (page 13) that they value said trips at the incremental cost of that trip and, doing the math, that that works out to something less than $14/trip (6.2 million awards, $85M liability) or 0.05 cents per mile (figuring an award as a standard 25,000 mile award).
The quarterly cost of the liability the award redemption rate of 1.2M per equals 300,000 trips per quarter -- or about $4M in expense.
We also know from the August Quarterly Report (covering the quarter ending June 30 '04), page 13:
"Other" is listed on page 2 as $162 million. A $17 million revenue increase in a single quarter primarily due to "an increase in mileage credit sales" strongly suggests to me that they're making pretty good money on those sales. If "primarily" means "half or more" then we're looking at $8M.
In other words just the increase in sales, not even including the baseline sales, easily covers the expenses related to DM.
That sure looks like making money hand over fist to me.
That is not what I said. I said that SWA acts quite differently than you recommend US should act. There's a world of difference between those statements.
That's not a myth. That's just a report on their actions. And while inflamatory on this board it's just another bit of misdirection on your part.
The SWA mythology that legacy carriers, analysts, the press and laymen fall for time and time again has to do with the factors that suposedly make SWA successful. In many cases the myth has an underlying truth behind it but you have to get beyond the superficial characteristics if you want to leverage it successfully somewhere else. I think the carriers are finally starting to understand that. Some analysts get it too. The press is hopeless.
It's all about differentiation. Being "just like" DL or CO is as big a mistake as being "just like" SWA.
They haven't offered to do such a thing. If and when they do then I might think it is a good move -- quite a few of my tickets have been in the $1+/mile range. It depends, of course on how they approach it. The changes that were attempted in August of '02 were problematic in many ways. The threads on that topic were quite long and involved. Review them if you've forgotten.
You tell me. Who's complaining about that? It is one of the ways they keep the cost of redemption down. I understand it and I can work with it. I can think of ways to tweak the process for the better and I would encourage US to move towards a model closer to RR or SPG but it's a small thing.
If you're talking about upgrade inventory levels then I refer you to l4pi's post regarding your lack of understanding of the issues.
More power to them if they can actually sell them. GoFares in F are a wonderful thing. Selling seats is not incompatible with awards or upgrades.
As to your common "why complain" theme -- we're customers. We get to do that. We're the ones with the money that the company wants to extract from our pockets into their coffers. Every complaint is a gift...
