In defence of the NWA fare people they have said when asked about fare increases in the past."SWA , Jet Blue and the internet is what drives prices.If they raise prices then we will. " Driving prices down is not on the agenda if they can avoid it.DL has ruined the budget so to speak.They had planned on bring in 12 billon and now they think it will be only 11.5...Thats life.....
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NWA Stopping Recalls
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General Lee
Well-known member
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Hey, they can still keep their fares the same, it's just the competition will charge lower. We have a heck of a lot more LCC competition than NW, and we have to create change, not just follow it, to survive. We have lowered their expenses by $2.3 billion a year ($1 billion a year from 7,000 total pilots alone). So, they have the ammo.
Bye Bye--General Lee
Bye Bye--General Lee
smellthejeta
The plane I solo'd in
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2003
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- 588
DL Fares
Hey General,
DL's getting some flack for revenue deflation with the new Simplifares program. While I am too uneducated to tell you whether or not it's a spot on program, it's both innovate and practical (at least as far as the network carriers are concerned), so I hope it works for you guys.
First things first, it's about friggin' time an airline makes a reasonable attempt to fill F with revenue pax that are NOT frequent fliers getting courtesy upgrades from rock bottom fares. I'm a low level FF on a particular SkyTeam carrier, and frankly, I cannot figure out why my 5 transcons a year at $250 a pop makes my butt worth putting in F for no extra charge, or furthermore, why they'll actually let me sit in F for paying a $250 fare. Some carriers use fare class restrictions for their international upgrades, but the major problem with that is that those upgrades are still done a week before departure. IMHO, if a customer pays a higher fare for the sole purpose of a possible upgrade, there should be some rebate if a customer can't be upgraded. Anyway, pricing domestic F at a price that is affordable is a good start. If the seats were a little better than souped up exit row coach seats, I would seriously consider paying $800 for the trans-con that I just booked in coach.
Next, I'm happy to see somebody do something with revenue generation. For too long, everybody has been focusing on cost and cost control, ignoring the revenue side of the house; which, not to to state the obvious, is broken. Those stupid Saturday stay rules and $100 change fees have got to go. For one, not every leisure traveler has the standard Sat-Sun off days, and not every leisure traveler has $100 to spend on change fees. Dropping the Saturday stay was smart, but the problem with ANY change fee is that changes arent' "free" anyway. They still come with the disclaimer that you must pay any applicable fare increases. I'm sure you know that if you made a last day or last minute change to a reservation, that you would have to buy the equivalent of a full fare ticket, which is much greater than the change fee. If it were possible to change most itineraries and not pay a fare increase, then $50 would be an appropriate surcharge.
Next, I think adding some more flexibility to tickets would be a way to get people to may modest increases in fares. Perhaps by paying an extra $50 at time of booking, passengers might be able to make confirmed changes to the time of day (but not date) of travel. I know I'd be willing to do that in a lot of cases.
The other thing DL ought to do is completely revamp DL.com. It sucks. If you want to buy a ticket, you can either search by price or search by schedule. With the first option, it will give you the first xxx cheapest tickets, and there's no way to force it show additional flights that may be slightly more expensive. The other option lets you pick by flight, but doesn't tell you if you could save a few bucks by flying slightly earlier or later. NW, CO, and Expedia all have some form of a search by schedule AND price, where it displays every flight leg by leg and the associated prices. It's also nearly impossible to pick which fare rules you want to buy; it seems that you either get cheap seats or the expensive ones, and nothing in between. Southwest has a GREAT website in that respect -- it shows you all the available fare buckets and associated rules. It really is great.
Another thing DL needs to do is revamp SkyMiles a little bit. I know other airlines have monkeyed around with earning miles based on fare paid, and giving less than 1 mile earned per mile flown on the cheapest fares. That was a PR disaster, even if it had to be done. Instead, they went back to the old system but reduced the number of FF seats available in each flight and market. This is pissing people off too. If it were up to me, I think an equitable solution would be to raise the amount of miles needed for a freebie ticket to somewhere between the "cheap" seats and the "not cheap" seats but then do it WN style and give a ticket out if there's an open seat. The FF program (or should I say miles) have no meaning to the consumer if they can't use them. Even if the award seats cost a little more, knowing that one could actually redeem the miles might drive business to DL. It's either that or chuck SkyMiles altogether (not a bad idea, but a PR disaster).
Although DL is not my "carrier of choice" within SkyTeam (I picked mine long ago when DL did not serve my hometown), I do travel on DL when it makes the most sense for me to do so, and if DL can attract more business and make money, I hope simplifares works for you guys.
Hey General,
DL's getting some flack for revenue deflation with the new Simplifares program. While I am too uneducated to tell you whether or not it's a spot on program, it's both innovate and practical (at least as far as the network carriers are concerned), so I hope it works for you guys.
First things first, it's about friggin' time an airline makes a reasonable attempt to fill F with revenue pax that are NOT frequent fliers getting courtesy upgrades from rock bottom fares. I'm a low level FF on a particular SkyTeam carrier, and frankly, I cannot figure out why my 5 transcons a year at $250 a pop makes my butt worth putting in F for no extra charge, or furthermore, why they'll actually let me sit in F for paying a $250 fare. Some carriers use fare class restrictions for their international upgrades, but the major problem with that is that those upgrades are still done a week before departure. IMHO, if a customer pays a higher fare for the sole purpose of a possible upgrade, there should be some rebate if a customer can't be upgraded. Anyway, pricing domestic F at a price that is affordable is a good start. If the seats were a little better than souped up exit row coach seats, I would seriously consider paying $800 for the trans-con that I just booked in coach.
Next, I'm happy to see somebody do something with revenue generation. For too long, everybody has been focusing on cost and cost control, ignoring the revenue side of the house; which, not to to state the obvious, is broken. Those stupid Saturday stay rules and $100 change fees have got to go. For one, not every leisure traveler has the standard Sat-Sun off days, and not every leisure traveler has $100 to spend on change fees. Dropping the Saturday stay was smart, but the problem with ANY change fee is that changes arent' "free" anyway. They still come with the disclaimer that you must pay any applicable fare increases. I'm sure you know that if you made a last day or last minute change to a reservation, that you would have to buy the equivalent of a full fare ticket, which is much greater than the change fee. If it were possible to change most itineraries and not pay a fare increase, then $50 would be an appropriate surcharge.
Next, I think adding some more flexibility to tickets would be a way to get people to may modest increases in fares. Perhaps by paying an extra $50 at time of booking, passengers might be able to make confirmed changes to the time of day (but not date) of travel. I know I'd be willing to do that in a lot of cases.
The other thing DL ought to do is completely revamp DL.com. It sucks. If you want to buy a ticket, you can either search by price or search by schedule. With the first option, it will give you the first xxx cheapest tickets, and there's no way to force it show additional flights that may be slightly more expensive. The other option lets you pick by flight, but doesn't tell you if you could save a few bucks by flying slightly earlier or later. NW, CO, and Expedia all have some form of a search by schedule AND price, where it displays every flight leg by leg and the associated prices. It's also nearly impossible to pick which fare rules you want to buy; it seems that you either get cheap seats or the expensive ones, and nothing in between. Southwest has a GREAT website in that respect -- it shows you all the available fare buckets and associated rules. It really is great.
Another thing DL needs to do is revamp SkyMiles a little bit. I know other airlines have monkeyed around with earning miles based on fare paid, and giving less than 1 mile earned per mile flown on the cheapest fares. That was a PR disaster, even if it had to be done. Instead, they went back to the old system but reduced the number of FF seats available in each flight and market. This is pissing people off too. If it were up to me, I think an equitable solution would be to raise the amount of miles needed for a freebie ticket to somewhere between the "cheap" seats and the "not cheap" seats but then do it WN style and give a ticket out if there's an open seat. The FF program (or should I say miles) have no meaning to the consumer if they can't use them. Even if the award seats cost a little more, knowing that one could actually redeem the miles might drive business to DL. It's either that or chuck SkyMiles altogether (not a bad idea, but a PR disaster).
Although DL is not my "carrier of choice" within SkyTeam (I picked mine long ago when DL did not serve my hometown), I do travel on DL when it makes the most sense for me to do so, and if DL can attract more business and make money, I hope simplifares works for you guys.
Last edited:
General Lee
Well-known member
- Joined
- Aug 24, 2002
- Posts
- 20,442
Smellthejeta,
Delta is trying to make CORE CHANGES, and that is tough for any large corporation. We have started to advertise again, and get the word out. We all took large pay cuts, and we want to fight and win. Simplfares is going after the cost concious businessman who can't afford the $1500 one way ticket, and a lot of those went to Airtran or Jetblue for the $500 ticket. Now, we will win them back and fill first with paying passengers. As far as Skymiles, I think they have tinkered with it again to make sure more people are happy with it, and now they don't restrict the fares types that count on your Skymiles account----any ticket counts towards your eventual Meddalion status. Also, we have added a bunch of new flights to warm city destinations for our Skymiles members---like double flights per day from ATL to HNL, and more to the Carribbean. That should allow more people to get more seats to warmer cities. I think the marketing people are aware of the Delta.com site, and hopefully they will make it more user friendly. Thanks for flying on us.
Mick,
It helps when 1000 senior Captains leave between last May and this past Jan. Also, we increased our domestic schedule by 6% by decreasing the turn times at the hubs and flying the same equipment more often thoughout the day. That helped a lot.
Bye Bye--General Lee
Delta is trying to make CORE CHANGES, and that is tough for any large corporation. We have started to advertise again, and get the word out. We all took large pay cuts, and we want to fight and win. Simplfares is going after the cost concious businessman who can't afford the $1500 one way ticket, and a lot of those went to Airtran or Jetblue for the $500 ticket. Now, we will win them back and fill first with paying passengers. As far as Skymiles, I think they have tinkered with it again to make sure more people are happy with it, and now they don't restrict the fares types that count on your Skymiles account----any ticket counts towards your eventual Meddalion status. Also, we have added a bunch of new flights to warm city destinations for our Skymiles members---like double flights per day from ATL to HNL, and more to the Carribbean. That should allow more people to get more seats to warmer cities. I think the marketing people are aware of the Delta.com site, and hopefully they will make it more user friendly. Thanks for flying on us.
Mick,
It helps when 1000 senior Captains leave between last May and this past Jan. Also, we increased our domestic schedule by 6% by decreasing the turn times at the hubs and flying the same equipment more often thoughout the day. That helped a lot.
Bye Bye--General Lee
smellthejeta
The plane I solo'd in
- Joined
- Mar 31, 2003
- Posts
- 588
General Lee said:
The thing with SkyMiles is that a large segment of the leisure market doesn't care about Medallion status. I never did until I moved to the west coast. They care about turning those 25,000 miles they earned over three years of car rentals, hotel stays, credit card usage, and the occasional trip to grandma's house into another another trip to grandma's house over a three day holiday weekend. Fact is, it was a PR disaster to restrict accrual rates and fare types eligible for SkyMiles accrual, even though the need to do so was obvious. The restriction on the use of "saver" awards or what have you by limiting the inventory available or Blackout dates for SkyMiles redemption is having the same net effect, although it is less visible. Adding more ASM's to a destination has as little or as much affect on the availabity of award seats as inventory management wants it to have. As much as you may want to say that leisure travellers don't make airlines profitable, in this day and age you need both the businessman and the vacationer to survive. In order to do that, you need something for everybody.
merikeyegro
Well-known member
- Joined
- Nov 19, 2002
- Posts
- 163
It doesn't matter what DL or NW try to do as far as fares go, companies with a better competitive structure - be it costs, revenues, management, FF, etc. - will survive in this current environment. NW and DL can't raise prices because they'll lose market share. It's called commoditizing. In other words, airlines compete on price and little else. It's been happening slowly for the past decade with the Internet being the driver. Sites such as Orbitz, Travelocity, and Expedia make fares transparent and easy to search. Unless someone sees the difference between the service NW provides for $225 and the service UA (for example) provides for $150 as worth the difference in price, the $150 fare will win every time. So, NW could keep prices up at $225 and be stubborn about changing them - which will cost market share - or it could begrudgingly lower its prices and keep up with UA.
It's a race to the bottom, as you all would say, but there ain't much than can be done. This is going to continue until the industry shakes out. Now, if the gov't would stop granting U an extension on its ATSB loan and the BK judges would get on UA to get a plan going, there might be some relief. However, until then, it ain't gonna happen. Just simple economics. I feel sorry for all of you.
It's a race to the bottom, as you all would say, but there ain't much than can be done. This is going to continue until the industry shakes out. Now, if the gov't would stop granting U an extension on its ATSB loan and the BK judges would get on UA to get a plan going, there might be some relief. However, until then, it ain't gonna happen. Just simple economics. I feel sorry for all of you.
AnimalTale
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- Apr 22, 2004
- Posts
- 543
flyswatter
Member
- Joined
- Apr 27, 2004
- Posts
- 8
I understand that DL recalls are because of attrition and the push to keep Air Tran in check.. Last annual report put SWA loosing cash without the hedge fuel contract, so even the best of the best can not operate at current fuel prices.. Even their little safe haven is experiencing a few hiccups.. Too much growth too quick, with lack of attrtion
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