Originally Posted by Bluedriver

You are contradicting your previous comment. You said smiles and on-time performance won't increase revenue, but now you are saying if we aren't on-time our customers won't book us again.

That's completely contradictory.

If more customers book with us again, that increases demand for our available seats. More demand means JB can charge higher fares. More demand and loyalty mean more TrueBlue membership and credit card spend, which very clearly translate to more revenue, said every airline CEO ever.

On a separate note, Delta made a conscious and public (stated to their shareholders) decision several years ago to invest millions of dollars into on-time and completion factor, with the express purpose of creating a "revenue premium" to the competition because business travelers, vacationers and other people who buy a ticket to GET SOMEWHERE would be willing to pay a revenue premium for a higher likelihood of getting where they want to go, when they want to get there. It was wildly successful and Delta is often the most profitable airline in the world since employing the strategy. I'm not saying it's the only factor, but it's a big part of it and it was an intentional strategy.

Smiles generating revenue is a harder one to prove, but most Spirit and Frontier pilots will tell you that treating their customers like crap certainly hasn't helped the bottom line...