AirTran, What’s Wrong With You?

AirTran is a dinky airline that used to be called ValuJet until one of its planes crashed in the Florida Everglades, which didn’t do much for the airline’s image…or for the Everglades.

So OK, they had a glitch.

This isn’t as glaring a deficiency, compared with other airlines, as one that surfaced when in one single Saturday I had the identical bulk-mailed offer from a batch of other airlines. Nothing, though, from AirTran.

You may know that one of the thousands of members of GCAL (Greedy Class Action Lawyers) has sued Delta Air Lines because frequent flyers can’t always get the flights they want. (I’m more or less on the side of the GCALs for this one.) One reason for an overabundance of miles is that as often as not, compiling frequent flyer miles doesn’t have anything at all to do with sitting in an airplane seat. You’ve stayed at a hotel, supported the opera, actually bought those miles for 2 cents each, switched long-distance carriers, or, most often, used a participating credit card.

An airline allocates just a certain number of seats to frequent flyers for each flight. Seat allocation makes sense to them, because otherwise they’d be up to their eyeballs in frequent flyers who aren’t paying for their travel.

(What do you mean, they paid for their travel by being loyal to this airline, which goes from New York to St. Louis by way of Seattle, when they might have booked a nonstop on another airline? We gave them miles, didn’t we? Isn’t getting the miles enough for those ungrateful louts? Now they’re insisting on using them too? What nerve!)

The race is on as never before, as that bunch of mail on the same fateful Saturday exemplified.

A little background is in order.

Last April a bulk-rate mailing from Delta offered me 5,000 bonus miles for switching my long-distance phone service to MCI. Not bad. I’d guess 5,000 bonus miles can fly me from Fort Lauderdale to Miami, some 30 miles away.

A couple of months later, in came another bulk-rate mailing from Delta. It offered me 6,000 bonus miles if I switched long-distance service to MCI, at the careful rate of 1,000 miles a month so I wouldn’t switch and run. Fair enough. And by waiting I’d picked up 20% more miles. Aha! Cat and mouse! What might happen if I didn’t cave in right away?

Delta may have given up on me, but on the same day three new offers arrived. United’s bulk mail offers me 10,000 bonus miles-well, “up to” 10,000 bonus miles-for signing up with MCI, “our new telecommunications marketing partner.” I’m writing this in mid-November, and “This offer expires Nov. 30, 1998.” Now, what’s peculiar is that MCI isn’t that “new” a United communications partner. United already had mailed me that same offer a couple of months before: “And it expires Sept. 15, 1998…so you must be prepared to act quickly.”

Aside from the direct response no-no-don’t use the phrase “you must” when you’re wooing-credibility takes a hammering with an identical offer. Why couldn’t they tweak it enough to make it seem just a little different?

Northwest hasn’t been so frequent with its MCI frequent flyer offers; but yes, their 10,000-mile deal arrived on that same Big Deal Day, so they were in the bidding. For Northwest, that’s one mile for every minute of waiting-time for your luggage.

I was really hurt that my favorite airline, Continental, didn’t try to match the offers. The last MCI deal they sent me was last March, for a piddling “up to 5,000 miles.” Don’t they know the others have raised the ante? Of course, their offer was 1,000 miles better than the Chase Bank offer they sent me three months later. Let’s not fly backward, fellas.

The current world champion has to be US Airways, whose name-change from USAir I’ve never understood. (On the other hand, I find the corporate name Diageo totally incomprehensible, even after knowing it’s Greek/Latin for Day/World. Ahh, that’s off the point.)

Back in December 1997, US Airways bulk-mailed me an offer of “up to 7,000 bonus miles” for switching to MCI. That was better than the measly 2,500 miles they offered me for picking up another Visa card and clearer than the “20% mileage dividend” they offered for a platinum Visa.

US Airways was moving backward, because this past September the airline offered just 6,000 miles for that same switch to MCI. (Envelope copy: “Earn up to 6,000 miles.” They’re no more copy-wise than United, because that word “earn” on an envelope is deadly.)

Ah, but on that fateful Saturday, US Airways joined Northwest and United. Ten thousand miles! That’s provided I switch to MCI before Dec. 15, a date that will have passed before you read this.

I have more than three phone lines, so I could have switched one for each airline. But no, friends, I didn’t switch. I’m holding out. Except for that aberration in US Airways’ offers, the numbers seem to be going up. I figure if I wait until the year 2005, they’ll offer me “up to” 25,000 miles. That means once I’ve been a loyal and true MCI convert for God knows how many months, they’ll accept my booking-provided it’s another 11 months ahead, I imagine-for a coach seat from Fort Lauderdale to Newark. And whee! During the flight I can march from my seat in row 33 to the first class washroom, just like the other coach passengers do.

Which will come first? Will the flood from credit cards and long-distance phone services swamp us with frequent flyer miles…or will the airlines make it so difficult to use those miles that all discussions are either historic or academic?

And should we bother to analyze the strangeness of one loyalty program using another? Now that anyone, anywhere, can buy frequent flyer miles for 2 cents per mile, the dam really has burst. Local stores, fundraisers, the library, alumni groups, and every organization short of Amtrak are using frequent flyer miles as incentives or as part of their own loyalty programs.

So let’s go, AirTran. I know you fly between two cities. Sorry, I don’t know which two, but as soon as I get my miles I’ll be on board to cash them in. I’ll use another airline’s miles to get to whatever city you’re in.