News and notes from around the interweb:
- Now that Uber quotes upfront pricing you don’t pay more when drivers take longer routes but some drivers will take roundabout routes anyway to extract more pay from Uber.
- Last week I wrote about a court ruling in Brazil that said American Airlines could not stop AAdvantage members from selling their miles. The airline finally shares comment, suggesting that they “most certainly going to file an appeal to the Superior Courts.”
The airline is not treating this as a precedent that applies to their members generally, just to this one instance, and is filing a motion for clarification with the court. Their appeal will wait for the motion to clarify the ruling, so this could all wind up taking awhile.
Brazilian courts aren’t friendly to airlines — in 2016 a passenger won $1400 when SWISS failed to board their kosher meal.
- Air France KLM Flying Blue award price map since there’s published no award chart, just a ‘calculator’, this is a helpful visualization.
- Loyalty programs are undermining their economic models through devaluations and destruction of trust Lifetime value of a customer models don’t work when you undermine customer loyalty. So says an industry veteran who hosts conferences for frequent flyer program executives.
- People are using wheelchairs at airports to get through security faster. I covered the benefits and moral issues last week.
The good news: Fakers probably don’t take advantage of the system often, Leff said. For starters, if you know a wheelchair gives you early boarding access, you’re probably a pretty savvy traveler already, meaning you’ve likely signed up for other priority services like TSA PreCheck or Global Entry, Leff said. “Among frequent flyer circles, this is not a common recommended practice,” he said.
…It’s possible to pay extra for wheels at the airport, without having to pretend to have bad knees or some other kind of injury. You may also able to pay for special services like golf-cart escorts through the airport, Leff said. When he flies to Bangkok, he asks for a golf cart to take him and his wife through the airport because it’s so large.
…If you fly regularly with one airline, the airline may contact you with free offers like a car from the airport to the tarmac, so you don’t have to navigate the airport, Leff said. That’s the kind of treatment usually reserved for VIPs.
Suffice it to say the loyalty guy hasn’t been doing any consulting with US airlines. I think they embrace literally zero of the concepts he puts forth. You think Dougie gives a whit about the AA customer 5 years from now, let alone 25?
In fact, I’d suggest his whole premise that loyalty is a long term game is embraced by zero in today’s business environment. CMO’s last on average a year. His article seems quaint. Anything farther out than a couple of quarters, we’ll deal with when we get there. This guy does not seem very current.
Wheelchairs aren’t exactly a fast track way through security. If you’ve ever had to deal with it, it’s a huge pain. There often aren’t enough people to push you from ticketing to the gate, so you’re stuck waiting. If you can’t walk through the metal detector, that’s even more time.
If you want to get to the front of the line, there are much better ways to do it.
I’ve noticed goofy driver routing on Uber/Lyft recently and was wondering why a driver would purposely go out of the way when it is a flat rate. So now that makes sense but the bigger question to me is how have some tech boi’s in Silicon Valley being outsmarted by a group of lowly drivers? Would think this would be pretty easy to weed this out (ie give them one warning per week and then either suspend account or cut rate back down.
Last month I requested an Asian Vegetable meal on my UA HNL-SFO flight in F. FA came around to ask me about it, laughed at my choice and asked me if I really wanted it. I told her yes, I had requested it on purpose, to try something different. They then brought me the same meal as everyone else but had a different granola bar and a piece of paper labeled ‘special meal’ with my name on it. Every time I think UA will be different I’m disappointed…