Has US Airways lost its mind ?

[SirCris]

US Airways message (http://www.usairways.com/dividendmiles/preferredlevels/silvergoldguidelines.htm)


Effective January 1, 2003, Dividend Miles members will not receive miles or segment credit toward Preferred status for tickets purchased in H, K, V, Q and L nonrefundable fare classes.
<font size="2" face="Arial, Verdana ">This small amendment to the rules has caused a huge fuss over @ Flyertalk (http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum51/HTML/003147.html) because it is basically rewriting the frequent flyer elite eligibility rules. I think this will lose US huge amounts of loyal frequent flyers.

I am not in favour of this step, but then I am entitled to my opinion. Whats your thoughts on this ?

[jetstewus]

I hadn't heard that yet from the company. I know we are enforcing some of our rules on non-refundable tickets. It seems kind of unfriendly at first, but I hope this will be trend toward airlines finally getting paid what the product is worth. (the travel portion, anyway)

I think they have painted themselves into a corner by letting people switch all their plans around all the time when they have cheap tickets. It costs alot of money to run a network airline that way.

I'm surprised they are going after the dividend program but if that is true, I reckon others will soon follow. Those must be the very lowest fare groups.

[jetstewus]

Looks like they've softened the new policies a little based on negative cutsomer feedback. Customers with non-refundable tickets will be allowed to stand-by for a $100.00 fee. (don't know how this works if they don't get on.) Also, all miles earned will again count toward dividend miles status. I read this on another aviation board but haven't heard it from the company yet.