Originally Posted by
Lincoln Osiris
Did we forget Frontier tried to buy Spirit during bankruptcy... TWICE?
that we know about. Too much to unpack to attempt to answer.
Originally Posted by
FriendlyPilot
If those tickets went away, United Delta etc would just sell those seats to someone else. Most likely the same people who are taking those trips. Instead of using credit card miles they would have to buy tickets.
Ceteris Paribus applies here. You can't just take away revenue anymore more than saying "Without First Class The Big 3 would not make a profit". There would be other seats there and they would create revenue as well.
isn’t points redemption counted as a revenue fare? Like bank of points buys the ticket on the behalf of the customer? Counted in the first profit category? So remove these points flights. They are estimated at 18-20% of revenue fares. Do you think they could survive even if half those tickets were bought by people and not points? If they lost 9% of their loads/revenue/passengers whatever.
credit card income is a check sent to United from chase or whoever as payment for their name on the card basically. Counted in the second category?
with points being diluted the ROI on interest payments has to be insane at 20-30% interest. Looking at profits of credit cards says yes. and the more diluted the points are the more revenue they make. Small points back means it takes what 30k spend on the card to buy that one leg from den to Omaha, but if it’s not paid off that month the finance charge is 6k plus.
My point no pun intended is the points game is very very very lucrative. It has given 3 -1/2 airlines their business model and made them into basically a protected class of company. If that were removed they would fold in my opinion unable to make a profit.