Strange Things Are Happening

Joel Widzer—who has accumulated almost 3,000,000 lifetime flight miles as a passenger—writes for Forbes.com that the much-touted Passenger Bill of Rights should be given up as a bad idea. He makes a most compelling argument by asking the simple question, "When has government bureaucracy been the answer to anything?" When indeed? Widzer also points out that if the cost of guvmint (my word, not his) intervention is passed on to the airlines, ticket prices will rise and passenger rules and restrictions will become more onerous. I agree with the man. The American public is mad as hell at airlines, however, and Congress must always appear to be "doing something" about all problems. More’s the pity.   Change of subject… There is much talk of the airlines selling their frequent flyer programs. When first hearing of that I was shocked. Aren’t the programs a cost stream, rather than an income stream? How the heck do you sell a cost? That’s kinda like my selling you the right to mow my lawn, isn’t it? As it turns out, no it isn’t. Those programs are valuable to other service industries such as hotels. The names alone are worth a fortune. Where else can you get millions of names--and other contact info—of frequent travelers? What else can you sell to those people? But what about the costs of providing those free tickets? No problem. Potential buyers say they can buy those from the carriers at whopping discounts. In fact, they have been buying them already for their own frequent customer programs. The report is that some of these programs could sell for billions. That’s enough to greatly increase the value of the airline itself, and that’s important in these days of expensive oil. Sounds good to me. We’d love to post your comments. Please click the comment tab at the top.