Value of Airline Loyalty

[jimntx]

They typically have been in the 70% to 85% full range according to airline data, which means that you could have removed 15% of the seats (which they did not) and still made the same revenue. In some cases, removing the seats allowed them to fly with 1 fewer flight attendant so it actually saved them money.
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As a working flight attendant, I rarely see empty seats on any of my flights, and there aren't that many nonrevs getting seat assignments. When they say capacity is 70-85%, they are talking about all flights to all destinations including all the flights such as PHX-MCI which is an old America West route. The one time I worked that particular flight we had 34 passengers on a 160 seat airplane. I did some checking out of curiosity and that seems to be a typical load for that route. To say that the resulting math proves anything is stretching the truth. Having 126 seats empty on PHX-MCI does not make more seats available for removal on DFW-LAX. I wasn't around except for the very end of MRTC; so, I'll defer to IORFA to answer this question...how many routes actually lost a flight attendant position due to MRTC? I know that reducing a S80 from 140 seats to 105 seats (removing 7 rows of 5 seats which is more than they actually removed) would not reduce the FAA minimum crew at all. It's still 1 f/a for every 50 seats, period. 140 seats requires 3 f/as. 101 seats requires 3 f/as.

 

[wcs]

...how many routes actually lost a flight attendant position due to MRTC? I know that reducing a S80 from 140 seats to 105 seats (removing 7 rows of 5 seats which is more than they actually removed) would not reduce the FAA minimum crew at all. It's still 1 f/a for every 50 seats, period. 140 seats requires 3 f/as. 101 seats requires 3 f/as.

None. As you pointed out MRTC didn't remove a number of seats that would permit cabin crew staffing
reductions in any fleet type. However, staffing requirements increased with the 737s going to 160 seats.

In relation to your comment about load factor being system-wide number, I have a Crandall story.
Mr. Crandall once said that the airline is "virtually" full at an 80% (near that number, I can't recall the precise figure). That is because if one route, ie DFW-SAT is 100% full and BOS-DFW is at 75% you can't sell any more seats to someone who wants to fly BOS-SAT, therefore some BOS-DFW will remain empty unless you can find BOS-DFW (or another beyond destination) passengers.

 

[jimntx]

That 737 staffing requirement was a correction to an original configuration of 152 seats. They had to have a 4th f/a for 2 seats. Someone figured out that was costing them some money and increased the seating to 160. We at least broke even on those extra 8 seats.

 

[jack f]

One of the nice things about a free market democracy is that we have choices. I'm not trying to be snarky, but I doubt you will find another airline loyalty program, such as AAdvantage, that is all that different from the AAdvantage program. One possible exception might be the loyalty programs on foreign airlines that are subsidized by their governments.

AA has a gigantic corporate liability with the number of miles currently being carried on the books in the earned category. When it first started it seemed like a great idea, but limits are having to be placed because the airline could be in serious trouble if all those miles got cashed in at one time. Yes, I know you earned them, but flying planes around with nothing but rewards passengers on them can get very costly.

Just the number of Executive Platinums, those who fly more than 100,000 miles/year, is staggering.

Please!! You folks love to complain about foreign carriers "subsidizing" their carriers. You don't consider bankruptcy court to be a subsidy? What about all the collusion that the governments, including ours, allows to take place through these scam airline alliances that allows carriers to collude on international ticketing?