It's not that going back to it is the right move so much as going away from it in the past was the wrong move and they seem to be correcting. The recent BB video reacting to negative PR and customer sentiment is an obvious response towards managing the product. The pendulum swung all the way towards fully unbundled, max profits above all else, pushing ancillaries and unit margins, etc. Now the pendulum is swinging back towards (hopefully a healthier/happier) medium with known costs. I think most of us see it as a good thing. It seems like they think high conversions of The Works/Perks products is worth the tradeoff of perhaps lower unit revenues. The limited timeframe shows they are dipping toes in the water...if it goes to full rollout at the same price point then that would indicate it works well for the long term. DS is extremely smart so I'll be interested to see how this pans out for 2H guidance at the next investor call. No question it'll drive down complaints related to the bag fees though.

 

There is definitely a line. (Record breaking ancillary profits are not good when your PR and CS are in the dumpster.) If you are making a bit less money, but filling planes even more than you already are with people who actually say to their friends "go take Frontier, its great!" creates more profits and growth over time.

Just look at southwest. They were raking in loyal customers and still do. But recently, they have had a hard shift with both customers and employees since Herb went away.

 

Agreed, perhaps my comment was unclear in that I think they are reacting fixing the product and addressing the customer (as they should) instead of sacrificing PR and CS like you commented. Before this career I was in senior management at fortune 300 where we implemented NPS all the way back in 2009 before it was popular - I understand and appreciate your argument about filling planes with loyal customers. Herb's leadership is an HBS case study in airline management, we'd be wise to invest in the product and customer before the growth gets away from us and we end up with a permanent spirit-like reputation. This is a unique opportunity in our business cycle to define what a national, dominant ULCC looks like so we have to get it right.

 

This company may be making a shift towards better CS at the expense of max profit but until they ACTUALLY do, I won’t believe this is anything more than a money grab in different form.

If F9 wanted to provide better customer service, they could do ONE thing that would greatly improve almost all areas of ops. That one thing is increase the time (layover) between flights. It’s impossible to turn a 320 in 50 minutes 6 to 7 times a day. It may be doable ONCE but the first time there’s a higher number of wheelchairs or a hazmat/extensive cleaning is needed or even something as simple as a small MEL (like Class II Max message), the flight leaves late. And that cascades into all the subsequent flights being late as well. Late leads to gate agent stress so they rush, are shorter with pax, tend to want to be harsher with the bag fees and pester the FAs to board. Some even “stage” pax in the hot jetbridges while FAs do their inspections leading to more customer discomfort. Plus, the aircraft aren’t reset (shut down fully) as often so the computers are more prone to issues.

If each time there’s a crew swap, the time between flights were increased to 1+30 (1+45) for 321, the company will loose a lil $ but gain astronomically in making life easier for everyone.

 

Man. We just can't stay above 2000 on this seniority list.

It goes up, and a week later it goes right back down.

 

Customer satisfaction will be going way down. Just look how things were doing the last negotiation. Smiles aren’t free.

 

Yup. The pilot group hasn't grown since January...

 

a whopping 8 upgrades this month....without deep diving too much, looks like close to a dozen CAs have left since we've had the last upgrades, which was 3 months ago? fastest growing airline....

 

how will they "staff the airline" once all the Airbus orders escalate with numerous airframes arriving ?

park them ?

 

They won’t care.

They’ll offer us a $40/hr across the board pay raise tied to a 5 year deal, the dismissal of all outstanding grievances, and no changes to anything else. When we don’t take the deal, they’ll start sending airframes to other carriers until we capitulate.

You heard it here first.