These are my thoughts regarding the recent enhancements of the United Airlines Mileage Plus frequent flyer program. For quite
some time, Mileage Plus has been one of my preferred frequent flyer program even
though I was based outside the traditional catchment area of United and
Continental frequent flyers.
It has been well publicized
during the past year that United Airlines CEO, Jeff Smisek, has carried on a
campaign against the “over-entitled frequent flyers” although with a questionable
track record for United Airlines. Along this line, came yesterday the
announcement that the frequent flyer program would add some revenue requirements
for earning Elite status.
What is new however is that this
campaign has been extended and now also target what I will refer as the general
public. I learnt this morning with shock that United Airlines has added some new
fees for changes made to award flights outside of the 21-day period. This is definitely
a non-customer-friendly step that I believe is in the wrong direction.
After
all, even the famed former CEO of American Airlines, Robert Crandall said
recently “I think the airline industry is
making a fundamental mistake when they rely as heavily as they are now on
ancillary revenues. The industry cannot have a long future if they are focused
on hosing their customers”
It is well admitted that using
and reserving capacity constrained awards can be difficult due to the lack of
availability at many desirable dates. Some frequent flyers try to grab seats almost
a year in advance and as soon as awards become available and before they are gone
to other customers. Most of the time, this is done without a full knowledge of
our own schedules, meetings and vacations for the following year. However, customers
were still allowed to change their awards without penalty whenever more
desirable dates became available or if their business schedule warranted so.
This will no longer be the case.
Besides, this new fee has nothing
to do with costs. Instead it is merely another revenue stream, trying to nickel
and dime customers. Indeed, the cost for United of letting customers change
awards more than three weeks before departure is minimal. On the other side, changes
made less than 21 days in advance, when it becomes critical for United Airlines
to find new customers to replace newly vacant seats have always come with a fee
which I believe is fair.
I urge United Airlines to
reconsider this decision although I am skeptical this will be the case given
the recent consolidation in the airline industry and the resulting bargaining
power legacy/network airlines now have compared to their customer base. I will nonetheless
reconsider my flying choices whenever I can because I don’t want my business to
favor non-customer-friendly airlines.
Let me also add to this that I am quite annoyed by the US Department of Justice and the US Department of Transportation that drink the airline kool-aid and that keep letting legacy airlines consolidate and therefore reduce competition. With only three major network carriers remaining in the United States, it is no surprise they are making so many customer-unfriendly moves. Yes, I know there are also some other supposedly low-cost carriers but their networks and particularly their international networks are very limited. I can't fly JetBlue to Guam, I can't fly Frontier to Bangkok and I can't fly Southwest to Dubai...
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