Greg Rosalsky

I'm a basic economy kind of guy, okay?

Do I love it?

No.

When I walk by the first class section, do I give a little side eye?

In truth, no.

My revealed preference?

It's definitely cheaper fares.

And there are a lot of people out there like me.

Yeah, and this is where it got particularly interesting for me because I spoke with this guy.

He's an economist.

His name is Severn Borenstein.

He's an economist at the UC Berkeley Haas School of Business.

And he told me that basically the big legacy carriers, they've been leveraging their market dominance, like their market position, and they've been making it much harder for smaller budget airlines to compete.

And they've done this by making their loyalty programs more enticing, more powerful, more

I think like, you know, co-branded credit cards, corporate partnerships, enhanced frequent flyer programs.

In many cases, it was not changing the total offering at all, but simply giving one customer priority over another.

Now, importantly, for loyalty programs to work, scale really matters.

And that's something that the big legacy airlines have.

They have scale.

And when an airline flies everywhere you want to go, the rewards are more useful.