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Just curious, but why wouldn’t one expect reliably repeat customers to be treated with increased consideration in these circumstances?

Seems to me this is true in pretty much every industry, yet for some reason with flights, certain folks (likely not the FFers) get very upset to realize their price sensitivity/lack of airline stickiness moved them to the back of the line.

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Can go both ways. The non-loyal flyers may never book with you again if they don’t get what they want.

A lot of the FFers don’t have much freedom in their booking, and are in too deep in the FF program to switch preferred airlines now.

The frequent flyer programs have less lock-in than you might imagine. Many airlines have status match programs, where someone who has status in one airline's frequent flier program will be extended the equivalent status in another's for a short period of time. If the passenger maintains a certain level of activity with the new airline, they keep their status.

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