United and Frontier…More Cutbacks and Fees
Travelfli is headquartered in Colorado so we pay specific attention to United and Frontier, since they each have a hub at Denver International Airport. Both airlines made important announcements this week that will affect their customers, particularly frequent flyers in Frontier’s case. Here’s the latest:
Frontier is the latest airline to succumb to the trend of monetizing their loyalty programs (as if they don’t already make enough money selling miles to credit cards and other partners). Starting on September 15th, frequent flyers will pay $25 to book an EarlyReturns award ticket and $75 to book a ‘rush’ award seat for travel within 14 days. If you need to cancel your ticket for any reason, there will be another $75 charge to redeposit the miles back into your account. If you’re lucky enough to be an elite flyer and a member of their summit tier, these fees don’t apply.
Furthermore, you will now need 20,000 miles to get a round-trip in the continental U.S., which is a 5,000 mile hike. to be fair, Frontier still has one of the lowest redemption rates around, as airlines like United require 50,000 miles for a U.S. flight. The cost of changing a flight will rise from $35 to $75.
I’ve remarked on this unfortunate trend before, but have decided to regard it a cost of doing business. I’d still rather pay $25 for a flight then $400. However, I’m hoping airlines will retract these fees as the price of oil drops, particularly because it’s stupid to alienate and/or piss off your best customers. Most of us learned this in Business 101.
United Airlines is the first airline to take a stab at charging for meals on transcontinental flights. The announcement was first made in an employee memo that went out on Monday, which ends free meals for economy-class passengers on certain Transatlantic flihgts, inluding all flight from their Washington Dulles hub to Europe. Business-class customers will still receive free meals.
The vehement response from frequent flyers all over the web was a bit surprising, especially considering these announcements from airlines have become pretty commonplace in the last several months. Several of the large forums, including Flyertalk, were swamped with comments from outraged customers.
Shounak from FlyerTalk remarked, “I know that the real money comes in from international routes, but creating goodwill domestically would have been invaluable to United. Instead, they’re destroying any loyalty that I feel towards them. And again, if United looked as if they were trying to upgrade services, wouldn’t we be more patient?”
Personally, I think it’s a little unfair that the airlines are expected to offer their services as a buffet, when any other service-related company is strictly a la carte. When you book a hotel room, you pay extra for food and drinks in your room. When you rent a car, you pay extra for more space. On the other hand, even though U.S.-based airlines are trying their damndest to move away from the buffet model, the non-U.S. carriers are still making flights all inclusive. United is at risk of losing substantial business to British Airways, Lufthansa, and Air France, since they compete directly with these airlines on international routes.
It will be interesting to see how this all works out…your thoughts?
