Saw this on the AA board...

Continental Airlines Announces Changes to Coach Service on International Flights

Concurrent with upgrades to its meal service, Continental will standardize its onboard liquor policy throughout its system worldwide. Beginning July 1, and consistent with its domestic main cabin service, the airline will implement a $4 charge per alcoholic beverage served in coach class on international flights. All revenue from the liquor charges will be reinvested to help offset significantly increased costs of the enhanced meal service.

http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/020520/dam035_1.html

This is ridiculous. How do they hope to compete with every other carrier out there. The European carriers give drinks left and right, even in coach.

[This message has been edited by Flying Fan (edited 05-21-2002).]

And they saw it here
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/Forum20/HTML/005303.html

Simple. They don't expect to compete. CO appears to think that it's product is SOOOOO good, that you'll gladly pay a premium for reduced coach seat pitch, the inability to upgrade Int'l tickets without paying even MORE, and now they think your average Frenchman is going to be HAPPY to shell out 4 Dollars/5 Euros/3 Pounds for his wine with dinner!

Personally, I think they'll go it alone. If you need to cut costs, you cut the costs that the customer WON'T immediately see. This one will smack 'em in the face.

i would rather pay for my drink and get better grub than get free booze.

but, you are right, Continental Airlines isn't particularly competitive. if you do a search and randomly pick 100 city pairs out of NYC (any airport), Continental will be the lowest price in extremely few. Continental doesn't even bother matching fares in many markets.

[This message has been edited by fly co to see the yanks (edited 05-21-2002).]

Looks like those CO currency coupons just became a bit more in demand!!!!!

Sure yanks, but you ain't gonna get better grub, at least not for long.

Sure, there gonna spend an extra 98 cents and then charge you $4 bucks for the grog to wash it down. Next thing they're gonna discover that the average passenger can't tell the difference in the grub, so the bean-counters will figure some way to "enhance" it back to the way it was or worse.

Once again, CO is showing those investors who pay attention that, financially, they are desperate. The drink "revenue" far exceeds the extra cost for "enhanced" coach meals. This is yet another desperate attempt to gather relatively short term dollars at the expense of long term strategy. Significant furloughs at CO have been warned internally. Although what's left of management is doing a decent job of sending the message that they will absolutely survive with few problems, their actions do not back that up. Watch out! Protect those OP miles or use 'em up.

Sorry Jon - I tried to make sure that this wasn't a duplicate post - but the title fooled me!

That's easy to understand as that was the exact goal of this press release-- masquerade a reduction as an improvement-- and hope everybody falls for it. CO calls them impructions. Actually they call them "enhancements."

agreed.

also, i'm surprise they didn't couch it in a way to say it was for flight crew safety. they could have said with the uptick in flyer rage they wanted to pull back on the gratis "grog."

[This message has been edited by fly co to see the yanks (edited 05-21-2002).]

Pretty short-minded move.Is this the only International airline in the world to charge for a beer??

Better hope Continental does not decide to resume service to Australia. No one would fly them if they had a choice for the same price. sounds like Continental is penny pinching.

So many nice euphemisms for the word "lies"...

Would you really change airlines based on not getting a beer or two?

I wouldn't, if the flight is better overall. And if the food is better then the other airlines.

I guess somebody had to be the first to try this one, and I hope CO gets enough misery as a result that they have to roll it back.

DON'T BUY the bit about the better food. While there's plenty of room for improvement with their food, history AMPLY SHOWS that any improvements will be swept away in a future cost-cutting round while additional charges will be retained. They simply don't have the credibility or the track record to claim otherwise (Look at the experience with fuel surcharges or Gordon's message that elite benefits wouldn't be cut).

The proper place to fund improvements to the food is from the fares, not from inventing new charges. Also, shame on them for once again using the divide-and-conquer bit about such-and-such thing only benefiting a "few." (By that selective logic, special meals should cost whoever ordered them a hefty surcharge, and all costs for wheelchair assists or disabled access would be borne by the user!)

As a practical matter, they deserve to have enough implementation difficulties to make this not worth their while. What about planeloads of heavy spending Japanese people carrying yen only to Guam? Or any other flight to the U.S. where people aren't carrying dollars? They have problems enough making change for $20s in domestic coach!

Hopefully that, plus complaints from flyers and reluctance of other airlines to match will finish this one off. I think it's another case where they're hoping the rest of the industry goes along.

In the meantime, to me it's another minor ding and indication that they're going in the wrong direction. The dollar impact on me if I had to pay $4 a pop would probably total less than $30 a year...it's more the principle. And the worse types of revenue "enhancing" moves it could foreshadow. Might be time now to shop for other programs to comp my plat status.