travellight

Since the mid 1980's, I've flown TWA transatlantic 19 times and racked up a bunch of miles. The fear of TWA fading into history is a persistant one. This hurts TWA and may force irrational choices from its members. For example, I am redeeming a 70K award on Icelandair for a ticket that would cost $399 because of my urge to clean out my account. TWA used to be a well respected airline. In the mid 1970's, a US President abandoned Air Force One for a commercial flight on TWA.

747

This has been a long term worry. About 8 years ago when things were really bad they had a partnership with American where when you flew TWA you could earn American AAdvantage miles.

This was good protection but I quess it got too expensive for TWA...or too many defections to American as the agreement only lasted a couple of years.

Pan Am had the same type of arangement for a while and we know what happened there.

TWA however KEEPS hanging in there!

doc

Sad but true. I too have cleared out much of my banked (pre Aviators FFB) mileage. Three transcontintal trips and family vacation under the old rules. I got too tired of calling/waiting for PR to clear! Hopefully things will improve. Perhaps while their older planes will hurt them somewhat, their older staff will help them immensely with their wealth of experience. I hope so.

danville 1K

747:

The agreement with American was designed to be short lived, and was part of the deal to sell AA TW's LHR route structure. TW had rights to LHR from LAX, SFO, JFK, BOS, IAD, ORD and STL. These routes were the crown jewels of TW, and Carl Icahn sold them off after he had sucked the airline dry of cash.

At the time of the sale TW almost had a sky bridge from JFK to LHR, with about 6 flights a day on this route alone.

The sale of the routes to AA included one or two of TW's 747SPs, which AA flew for a short period while they were waiting for new aircraft. This was several years after AA had sold off their 747-100s.


[This message has been edited by danville 1K (edited 09-22-1999).]

[This message has been edited by danville 1K (edited 11-06-1999).]

747

Danville 1K;

I think the 747SP's that AA flew those first years were reassigned from the AA routes to Japan.

I flew the first AA flight to LHR...the daylight flight from JFK. (767)

About a week later I flew back to JFK on the AA 747SP with standard AA markings, colors, etc. Perhaps they were old Pan Am...but AA did use them on the Tokyo flights years before.

buck

If I remember correctly, my first flight to Canada was on AA where I requested TWA credit. It was St. Louis to Montreal early on a Super Bowl Sunday. Unfortunately my plane was late due to snow in Chicago and then I was stuck in customs. I caught only the fourth quarter of the game (and by that time it was a blowout).

Fond memory... this was my first trip to Canada and I brought a desktop computer with demo software. Canadian Customs gave me a real hard time and wanted to know why I didn't arrange for a broker to be there. I replied that I didn't know what these folks did and why do I need this service if I'm only in Canada for four days. I was in my late 20's and didn't understand the whole customs red tape. I was made to sit in a little room while they took everything apart, but eventually I was released because I appeared to be a bigger hassle than I was worth.

As far as TWA, I've logged more miles on AA and USAir recently due to the markets I have been flying to, but I see little to take my main business from TWA. In my opinion, TWA has made great strides in service plus the unlimited first class upgrades are tremendous. I haven't been denied an upgrade but twice this year on about 20 round trips. I've used plenty of miles for family trips and now we're planning a trip for three couples to the Caribbean for February. Everything I read and evaluate indicates TWA’s future is solid so don’t waste your miles if you have them.

We’ll keep plugging on.


[This message has been edited by buck (edited 09-22-1999).]

jeffkurn

Travellight,

There are better uses of your 70,000 miles than a $400 ticket. Why not go to South America?

Also, if you are worried about your miles, you can insure them (just check out the main page of insideflyer.com). I suspect these days that TWA's lifetime will be longer than mine, despite all the people over the years that have predicted its immenent death. The insurance may be for peace of mind, and to insure that you don't dump your miles on low value awards "just in case." TWA is a great airline that just needs to find its niche (and maybe join an alliance?) to succeed.

[This message has been edited by jeffkurn (edited 09-22-1999).]

TransWorldOne

I believe the old adage goes something like, in ten years there will be only three airlines left... American, United, and the financially struggling TWA.

tfjim

With the current spate of fare increases, TWA can only be doing better. Their fares to the east coast (ie: New York) are at a pretty incredible level these days, they must be raking in the cash. I believe the load factors on these routes is consistently high.

Flights to the west coast seem similarly well used. And I know that the 1st class fares on these routes are incredible (PDX = $2500, SEA = $2800). I flew back from SEA recently on a packed MD83, brand new by the way (Boeing tag on the door frame - when the FA caught me examining the tag on the way in he said; "there's no date on Boeing tags, so he looked inside the cockpit for the 'born-on date' and it was June '99.)

I also recently flew JFK-SJU and SJU-STL and will be interested to see how their focus city strategy works out there. The JFK-SJU flight was on an international configured 757, so we had the nice, big comfortable seats with footrests up front (which was nearly empty except for us and one other couple.) The SJU-STL flight was an MD80, which is a bit long for the 4+ hours flight to St. Louis and no entertainment. I was the only person in first class so was well taken care of. Both flights were full back in coach and the FA said that a few years ago TW used to fly daily to SJU from STL and would have no problem filling up the flights again. I can imagine that because the only alternatives are AA and DL, no thanks.

Me, I'll stick with TW as long as I get the unlimited upgrades. I fly first class anyway with business, but I really enjoy the perks when I've bought a cheapo personal ticket. Next month I'll be flying to Madrid to visit some friends. Should be nice, fairly cheap fare and get to use complimentary international upgrade certificates both ways, no restrictions on those!