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.
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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.
The electronics ban has been lifted on Emirates and Turkish flights to the U.S.. The ban on electronics onboard Saudi flights to the U.S. is expected to be lifted by July 19.
Justin Cho and his family were preparing to board Delta flight DL937 from Los Angeles to Cancun on Friday. They tried to board the flight during priority boarding and were told to wait.
The father had his boarding pass scanned first. Since the rest of the family were several people back he waited for them before entering the jetway. And he got into an altercation with a Delta gate agent as a result.
The airline’s yield “was down 9.2% and overall load factors down by 1.2%” after making the change to their program, though of course program changes alone weren’t the drivers. However this ‘focus on high yield passengers’ didn’t lead to higher yields. It just chased away customers buying mid-range fares.
This seems as though it might be a cautionary tale for others.
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 »
