If you didn’t already understand that this is a crony capitalist play, with big airlines using their influence over Members of Congress to benefit themselves at the expense of consumers, the fact that the statements of Members are literally being written for them by United, American, Delta the change history in a Word document appears to prove it.
With so many premium credit cards now bundling Priority Pass membership, the number of people with airport lounge access has exploded.
Only about 5% of the 1000 or so participating Priority Pass lounges are located in the U.S. but an outsized percentage of members are U.S. based. That’s meant crowding in a handful of high demand locations, and even Priority Pass members turned away at peak times from places like the Alaska Airlines Lounge in Seattle and the Turkish Airlines lounge at Dulles.
Etihad used to have perhaps the most generous car service options for premium cabin passengers, and until recently even for most premium cabin passengers booked on award tickets.
Etihad’s new paid airport transfer option is just a referral relationship with another company, conxxe, but that earns miles.
Alaska has already broken up with long-time frenemy Delta which had attacked the Seattle-based airline in its home market by building up a competitor hub.
Now their relationship with American is more or less falling apart at the end of the year, with some components surviving into the new year.
Frequent flyer programs face significant fraud. A hacker takes control of an account, redeems all the points for gift cards, and uses the gift cards for merchandise before the account owner notices the points missing. By the time the theft is reported, someone has a ton of new iPads… that they’ve already liquidated for cash.
Or they’ll book travel.
American keeps lowering the price that they will sell miles for. After the merger with US Airways they took the Dividend Miles approach of putting miles on sale three fourths of the year. The only purpose that ‘regular price’ serves is to be a reference point that allows them to announce a huge (always on) sale.
At first they hovered a little over 2 cents a mile, then the price point fell to 2 and then below 2 cents. Each promotion would vary a bit but the trend has been downward.
Looking back a couple of years when I needed to fly somewhere I went to AA.com and booked one of the itineraries it offered me. I connected on American rather than flying non-stop on a competitor, or took less convenient flight times. I even spent more on tickets because American Airlines treated me well as an Executive Platinum member.
That’s the power of a strong loyalty marketing program. It earns incremental business and increased wallet share, converting trips that would have gone to a competitor.
A month ago United introduced Basic Economy fares on nearly all domestic flights other than Hawaii routes.
By preventing customers from reserving seats when they buy their tickets, and having them board last without full-sized carry on bags, they’re trying to make the travel experience miserable enough that customers will spend more money in order to avoid the restrictions.
A roundup of the most important stories of the day. I keep you up to date on the most interesting writings I find on other sites – the latest news and tips.
Shirley Yamauchi was flying Houston – Boston last week for a teacher conference and brought her 27 month old son. His ticket cost $1000.
They boarded in Houston for the 1600 mile flight and he was seated in his seat but another passenger — who was cleared off the standby list — appeared with a boarding pass for the seat.
Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel -- a topic he has covered since 2002.
Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »
