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Airlines Make More Money Selling Miles Than Seats (expressnews.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report: Does your wallet contain an airline-branded credit card? If so, your daily Starbucks visits, iTunes selections and dining habits serve a critical role in keeping the U.S. airline industry fat and happy. For carriers such as American Airlines, riding Citigroup Inc. plastic, or Delta, on American Express Co., these programs are a cash cow, a golden goose -- or any other fiscal livestock you care to conjure. Each mile fetches an airline anywhere from 1.5 cents to 2.5 cents, and the big banks amass those miles by the billions (alternative source), doling them out to cardholders each month. For the banks, people who pay annual fees for those cards in order to accumulate miles are the closest thing to a sure bet. These consumers typically have higher-than-average incomes and spend more on their cards, generating merchant fees for the banks. They also tend to maintain high credit scores, which means they pay their bills on time and banks experience fewer defaults. The airline-miles business, formally known as loyalty programs, has become a high-margin enterprise that's grown in size and value amid airline consolidation, with carriers keen to expand credit card rolls and see loyalty members spend more.
no, for an individual consumer, the best strategy is to, whenever possible, ask for a discount at least equivalent to the fees charged by the card to pay in cash, this way you recoup all the fees and not only the peanuts the bank throws back at you.
Yeah, walk up to the cashier in your local grocery store and ask for a cash discount. Good luck with that.
In places where you're talking to the owner, or at least a very empowered (and smart) manager or employee, you might be able to get them to knock 3-5% off for a cash payment, but it's rare. Everywhere else... get the best rewards card you can, and use it as much as possible.
I actually had the "cash discount" discussion last month when I bought a car (actually bought out my leased car). The dealership's policy is to accept plastic for purchases up $4K, so I offered to pay $4K with the card and the remaining thousand or so with cash. Once they said okay, I offered to pay cash if they knocked an additional $150 off the price, since that is about what they were going to pay in card fees. They refused. They also refused to knock $100 off. So, I paid with the card and got my 2% (a little under $80) discount that way. Unfortunately I noticed later that there was a promotion on my Discover card that I could have used to get 5% back, so I could have gotten $200 back (and they'd have undoubtedly been soaked for a bit more than that).
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How the heck is it even possible to get involuntarily bumped? Either you have a boarding pass with a seat assignment or you don't. Once you do, you have a seat. So this means they had to have taken someone who didn't have a seat and given that person a seat while forcing somebody else who already had a seat to give up that seat. That's completely idiotic. Just reassign the person who didn't have a seat before. They didn't check in early enough to get a seat, which was their decision. Why should people who spent the extra effort to check in and get their seat assignment have to suffer so that people who couldn't be bothered can take their seats?
The only even semi-plausible situation that could explain this would be if the equipment changed to a smaller plane, but even then, they should have known about the reduction in seats prior to boarding.
Because of several reasons. First of all, federal law allows the airline to overbook. Secondly, the plane is property of the airline. Third, the airplane itself is on property that is typically covered by federal law. You're also incorrectly assuming that United assigns seats based upon check-in. You pick your seat assignment when you book the ticket, or the airline picks one for you. They followed Federal law. The passenger was told that he needed to deplane. He refused. Once he did that, he was in violation of local and federal laws (federal because it was at an airport). He's lucky that he was not thrown in jail for trespass. It does not matter that he paid for a seat. Once his permission to be aboard the flight was revoked, he was required by law to deplane. The law also requires the airline to compensate him. They would have cut him a check and, as the GP says, probably booked him on a competing airline for free and given him a mileage credit. I've flown hundreds of thousands of miles and have never seen someone act this way, or seen someone be involuntarily bumped. I have had a schedule change screw me over in a similar way as this particular passenger. In that case, I was not given cash, but I did receive a new flight on a different airline and mileage credit for a flight that I would not have normally received miles for (it was an award flight that I had purchased with miles). The airlines will take care of you, they're required to. And even if there were no other flights that day, the passenger could have driven to Louisville the same day if he absolutely required it. People have been making a big deal about him being a doctor and his patients needing him. Well, what if he didn't show up for work because of a weather delay? There is no difference. His patients would have had to see an on-call doctor either way. The man should not feel entitled to fly just because he thinks he is more important than every other passenger on the plane.
It does not matter that he paid for a seat.The man should not feel entitled to fly just because he thinks he is more important than every other passenger on the plane.
You should go and read this again. A medical doctor, flying to a patient for surgery, with a paid ticket, an assigned seat, sitting in that assigned seat after boarding that aircraft, is not entitled to fly? Congratulations, you just made my top 10 of /. dumbest posters.
Why don't you try reading the federal laws regarding air transportation? And why don't you read property laws? The airline is allowed to ask him to disembark from a plane for any reason at any time it is safe for him to deplane. He was asked to deplane. He refused and was therefore trespassing. Had he been flying Delta that exact same weekend there is a high probability he would not have been able to fly either. So what would his patient(s) have done? If you have a problem with the booking practices of airlines then you need to complain to your federal representatives.
If you have a problem with the booking practices of airlines then you need to complain to your federal representatives.
IOW, GFY.