Letter from a former US Customer

[Twicebaked]

NO, YOU DON'T GET IT!!!

You are not royalty and you are NOT exempt from charges because you fly alot. Do you get discounts at the gas station because you drive alot? Do you get discounts at restaruants because you eat alot? NO you don't!!!

THE EMPLOYEES OF THIS OR ANY OTHER AIRLINE WILL NOT SUBSIDIZE YOUR TRAVEL!!!

It you want to fly someone else, go ahead.

Stop threatening it and just do it.

And take all the other cronic complainers with you.

 

[Art at ISP]

TWICE,

You really don't get it. Let me explain it this way. The business traveler ALREADY pays more than his share. WE'RE NOT ASKING FOR DISCOUNTS. We're asking not to subsidize the people you should REALLY be angry at.

We pay the majority of the bills...if we ALL leave you don't have a job. Do you get THAT?

And get the chip off your shoulder. We are not asking employees to subsidize anything. Did I just not say we support RAISES for most of you?

I have not spent a penny on a US Airways flight since April, so I DID put my money where my mouth was, as did MANY more.

So get over yourself and listen for a change.......

 

[vantheman63]

You people just don't get it!!!!

Twice - I'm not sure you completely understand.....or "get it."

For some crazy reason, this company, US Airways attacks the people it seems to understand the least: People who spend money and the VFFers.

I'll attempt to bring a little understanding via a story I was telling someone just yesterday.

A friend of mine who I just enjoy and think is a wonderful young man came to me for some advice. He had gotten himself, a college student, into a little bit of credit card trouble. It happens. I can claim for myself, I've been there, done that, got the t-shirt.

So, this young man was in complete panic mode as the payments were truly starting to eat into what money he was earning each month. He asked for some advice. I of course gave him the "pay it all off stuff, etc."

But I told him this: "You have a choice to make. You can basically stop living and lower your standards for everything, and pay the cards off. Or, you can make some changes...change your income situation. Change your thought process. Change how you think about what revenue or income you are generating."

My father taught me, at a very, very young age, "do not look at something and insist you can't afford it, ask yourself what you need to do to have it." And that advice is what I gave this young man....because it has worked out well.

US Airways is in the same boat.

While I head CO, WN and others having the same concerns, I see them taking VERY different tacts...trying new things to ADD value to their product as opposed to stripping cost. (And we know when US strips costs it also strips value)

I've said all along: "US Airways leverages off the two very groups of people that make if work, the employees and the pax."

Trust me Twice....we ALL know fuel is a concern. We all put gas in our cars. Where we disagree with US is how to manage through it. CO and WN are working to manage through this issue, US is letting the issue manage it.

As my favorite author Robert Kiyosaki says: "You either learn to manage money or you become a slave to it." Sadly, US Airways has become a slave to money.

 

[BoeingBoy]

Look at it this way.....

How is the short-haul FF'er who pays 50 cents, $1, $2, $3 a mile for a product that costs at most 25-30 cents a mile to produce being subsidized by anyone? Especially when they're on the same plane with someone connecting from MCO/LAS/etc who's paying 10 cents a mile or less for a product that costs 10-15 cents a mile to produce.

Now eliminate those FF's and their dollars - who will be subsidizing those leisure fliers who'll fly another airline if it's $5 less per ticket? The employees, perhaps?

Jim

 

[vantheman63]

THE EMPLOYEES OF THIS OR ANY OTHER AIRLINE WILL NOT SUBSIDIZE YOUR TRAVEL!!!

Wow Twice, you truly DO NOT get it do you? I thought maybe you just didn't get it...but you REALLY don't get it....

I'm a business guy...I operate as a "for profit" entity. I actually prefer the businesses I work with to make money. For me, money is the most renewable resource there is on earth. I WANT US Airways to make money. I certainly do no want "discounts" and I don't need to be subsidized. I spent $65K+ traveling around last year for myself, my employees and my clients. I'll be doing those kinds of numbers again this year. In fact, I JUST bought two tix on CO, F Class, $2,600+ to go PVD-SFO. No discount. I was happy to pay the money.

I simply don't want to be leveraged against, thats all. And quite frankly, the first thing I'd like to see the employees taken better care of. I don't like that the people that make the airplanes work for me sitting in a stagnant situation as long as they have. Any of us in business know, "without the people that make US fly, the airline doesn't exist."

How, in your mind, this is about guys like myself, Art or Piney wanting a "discount" or have you subsidize our travel, is beyond me. Hell, I want to see all of you and your compadres happy, earning a fair wage and smiling at work every time I climb aboard.

 

[Travelpro72]

This change has NOTHING to do with the employees taking more pay cuts to subsidize the FF's flying. This has to do with a management team who CONSTANTLY goes after their most important customers. I say most important because they are the majority of where our revenue comes from. The change United made clearly was aimed at the leisure traveler. THIS is where our company needs to make changes. WHY would a FF stay and fly US on short hops around the NE when they could fly another and get the miles? They can and WILL do this on UA. So twice your feelings on this matter toward the FF's is unwarranted. You SHOULD be mad at the company for the change. Where do you think we'd be if ALL of our current FF's left? See ya in the unemployment line. It's NOT the customer but an incompetent ONE TRICK management team that we should be mad at.

 

[hp_fa]

It's NOT the customer but an incompetent ONE TRICK management team that we should be mad at.

You forgot to insert "grossly overpaid".

 

[phlus2]

THE EMPLOYEES OF THIS OR ANY OTHER AIRLINE WILL NOT SUBSIDIZE YOUR TRAVEL!!!

So let me see if I understand this - I am a paying customer who paid $850 this past week to fly from Phila. to Boston, and somehow you as an employee are subsizing my travel? Let me enlighten you a bit - the ONLY reason you get a pay check is because of customers who pay to fly on the airline that you work for. Seems to me that I am subsidizing your pay check, unless I am missing something.

 

[SolidCactus]

Ill be honest, the change with the 500 miles really doesn't upset me that much, and I do fly a lot of short legs. I have the US Airways Visa, the US Airways Mastercard, and I even have the Bank of America US Airways Debit Card. Chairmans doubles your actual qualified miles... I do agree with every point made here... US does a great job at penny pinching those who should be the most valuable customers... AND it didn't take Southwest a long time to see that. They reconfigured their waiting areas with power for the business customers with laptops, created a business traveler fare which virtually doubles the FF credits and gives free drinks...

It still doesn't change the fact that the US Airways FF program is still one of the best in the business. Jet Blue, man, you have to fly A LOT to get a free ticket. Same with SWA (although the new business traveler fares do make a huge difference). Status with Continental is virtually useless because they only have an 8 seat first configuration in virtually all of their aircraft... I can't complain about Delta. I am only Gold there, and I have always been upgraded (they must not have as many gold's and platinum's as US does)...

What can you do? The fuel problem is not going away anytime soon...

 

[BoeingBoy]

What can you do? The fuel problem is not going away anytime soon...

There's lots of things they could do....

Start something simple, like the winglets on the 757's that'll be remaining in the fleet longer term. US is doing 4 in 14-15 months while CO anticipated doing 10 in the 7 months after the 1st one enter revenue service. Even at 200,00 gallons of fuel savings a year, that's $560,000 per year per airplane. Millions of dollars a year out the tailpipe going forward for no reason.

The single biggest change affecting fuel savings doesn't even have anything to do with the airplanes themselves - depeak the PHL & CLT hubs, especially PHL (ironically,PHX/LAS were relatively depeaked before the merger) . That could represent 10's of million dollars per year in fuel savings.

Jim

 

[SolidCactus]

The single biggest change affecting fuel savings doesn't even have anything to do with the airplanes themselves - depeak the PHL & CLT hubs, especially PHL

Well isn't that the truth. PHL is a joke. I miss PIT so badly...

 

[ptc8329]

I don't see how this change is defensible in any way. I think the issue is that management's attitude toward the customer trickles down to SOME of the employees. I believe that most of the employees are fantastic and realize what is going on, but some just "drink the koolaid".

Management has clearly demonstrated that they have absolutely NO interest in/desire to please their high-fare passengers. What I don't understand is why didn't they make this change for all passengers except elites? That would have been a simple fix and a measure of good faith.

I did an analysis because it has been bothering me, and I spent $21,472 in airfares last year. There were approximately 30 tickets (four were restricted coach, the other 26 were full fare, most were non-stop). For these flights, I earned 50,218 miles. If you do the math, this works out to be approximately $0.46 per mile. Assuming that US' CASM is $0.15 (including fuel), this would mean that on my fares, US earned an average profit margin of 67%.

Among the trips that I took were full fare flights that were less than 500 miles. These included Charlotte, Detroit, Pittsburgh and Toronto. All of these tickets were in excess of $500; however, most egregious was Toronto which was over $1,300. Had the new policy been in effect, I would have earned 3,111 fewer miles because of these short hop destinations. (The irony is that these routes were some of the highest cost tickets.) Most importantly, I would not have earned Gold status for FY08.

Included in the tickets above were three flights to Las Vegas (in the restricted coach tickets I spoke of above). These flights were all less than $300. For each of these flights, I earned 4,352 miles. Had I booked 12 of these tickets, I would have earned 52,224 miles on $3,600 of revenue at a profit margin of negative 117%. To add insult to injury, I would earn Gold status and US would have to give me a 50% bonus on my miles.

However the high-fare version of me above would be silver earning only 25% bonus miles and spending about $18,000 more than the low-fare passenger. For me, this is the LAST straw. I know people make that threat a lot, but I am done with them. I hope they file for bankruptcy again and go out of business this time. I believe we, as passengers, would be better served - since another airline would recognize the high fare passengers and vie for our business.

On Thursday, I am flying to Toronto for work. The fare is still over $1,300 on all airlines. I am flying United, despite the fact that I live in Philadelphia and this means I will need to connect. But certain things are worth protesting. If anyone is going to inconvenience me, it will be me - not a management team that doesn't value me or my business.

The other thing that I find interesting is that typically in times of economic slowdown, airlines offer incentives to keep their best customers flying and paying full fare. You may remember double qualifying points after 9/11 and during the bankruptcy. Apparently this management team seems to have the opposite approach. The irony is that on their Q4/full year earnings call, management indicated bookings for Q1 were softer than expected. I wonder why that might be.

 

[BuffaloJoe]

Except then you say goodbye to the automatic upgrades (when available) and technically even the ability to choose exit rows when the U/G isn't available. Those are apparently the only reason he chooses US in the first place (well, plus the non-stops which would be in coach as a UA elite).

Jim

Bofie and Jim, you are both correct. I just misinterpreted the way I read it. Sorry!

 

[BuffaloJoe]

You said it better than I did.

See POST ABOVE, I wanted to include this in that post and somehow got two post!

 

[hulagirl]

Albeit sad to lose a customer, I believe that some "gouging of the customer" is occuring at most airlines. The carrier that this pax has chosen as their carrier of choice just raised the price of checking gold clubs to $100.
The list could go on, but why?
The truth is that the airlines have been running for some time with artificially low fares, and while raising the fares has proven to be a failure in generating higher revenues, these added "costs to the consumer" make money for the carriers. Business travelers have always paid premium fares because in most cases, their travel plans are not made well enough in advance to obtain the lower fares. The higher fares paid by business travelers are paid by corporations in many cases, and is a cost of doing business.
Everyone is pissed off at us right now, and granted, we need to improve the operation and get contracts signed. But to consistently slice management in half with every turn is doing no one justice here. If the old management was so great, no one would be where they were before this merger. Let it go. Get a life. Be happy..