Amenities Being Eliminated from Long Distance Routes

[cocojacoby]

Of course, at this point the LSL is getting too long and will have to be made into two trains. That's OK.

How about a Boston - Chicago train and a New York - Chicago train that run independently but meet up in Albany for cross platform transfers. Then one train goes via Cleveland (the existing route) and the other goes via Detroit to create new markets?

I know the naysayers will mention the cross-border problem, but that could be worked out.

 

[jis]

The two trains will either have to follow closely one behind the other between Albany and Buffalo Depew or have to run as a combined train between those two points.

A more realistic thing would be to run them on substantially separate schedules as two separate trains with no synchronization in Albany, and then run one of them via Toledo - Detroit/Dearborn - K-Zoo - Chicago (possibly the later one to pass Toledo westbound and the earlier one to pass Toledo eastbound), and the other on its current route. As for running through Canada between Buffalo and Detroit, keep on dreaming.

 

[Long Train Runnin']

Of course, at this point the LSL is getting too long and will have to be made into two trains. That's OK.

How about a Boston - Chicago train and a New York - Chicago train that run independently but meet up in Albany for cross platform transfers. Then one train goes via Cleveland (the existing route) and the other goes via Detroit to create new markets?

I know the naysayers will mention the cross-border problem, but that could be worked out.

I would say the border crossing issue would be 1 of about 100 problems with your idea.

 

[Anderson]

As EB_OBS says, the Builder's strength, historically, is that it serves a lot of people who are not going end to end. If the EB goes away, ND, WA and MN are going to have to figure out a way to serve the workers who are commuting to the Williston area -- since there are a lot of these folks from Puget Sound and the Twin Cities.

In an ideal world, we'd have a twice-daily Builder, a twice-daily NCH, and at least a daily Pioneer. These trains would give sightseers and long-distance travelers who aren't in a hurry plenty of choices, while serving all of the thriving communities along all three routes. And I think a reasonable case could be made that whatever funding is needed for these trains would be less than what it would take to build and run services using other modes.

The cost to benefit ratio on that would be amazingly bad. Even if it costs less than other modes, that's not necessarily an argument for doing it.

That really depends. If one of each (the Builder and the NCH) run as a "local" hitting virtually any town that will fund a station with a flag stop (perhaps requiring tickets to be purchased by a certain time a la the Canadian) while the other runs as an "express", only hitting major towns, I think there's a decent case to be made for this. Additionally, those four trains would almost inevitably offer multiple good options CHI-MSP and SEA-SPK.

I would point out that Williston, for example, may be in a position to offer 100k+ riders/year, and it is very unlikely that any of the cities in North Dakota are going to end up with affordable passenger flights anytime soon.

 

[R30A]

" I think we can all agree that Amtrak will have fewer and fewer government dollars to spend as time goes on."

I certainly don't agree. The opposite has clearly been the trend over the last decade, and I have no reason to believe it will not continue to be, especially considering ridership and political trends.

 

[Paul Dow]

The problem of "trains not paying attention to schedules" applies mostly to just the LD network, which is a minority of trains run by Amtrak. Most corridors where by numbers most trains are, do adhere to schedules quite nicely most of the time.

True, NE Corridor trains usually run within a few minutes of schedule. Since I'm planning a trip on the Eastbound LSL, that's what I'm concerned with,

I looked up this month's results. Pretty scary looking. I'm concerned with the arrival in Springfield, MA, so the padding into Boston doesn't help it. Scheduled arrival is 5:48 PM. (17:48)

Date Actual Time Late

1-May 19:12 1:24

2-May 17:49 0:01

3-May 18:40 0:52

4-May 18:12 0:24

5-May 18:21 0:33

6-May 18:16 0:28

7-May 19:14 1:26

8-May 21:20 3:32

9-May 19:55 2:07

10-May 21:18 3:30

11-May 18:16 0:28

12-May 1:02 +1 7:14 Approx

13-May 19:46 1:58

14-May 19:55 2:07

15-May 19:35 1:47

16-May 18:54 1:06

17-May 19:34 1:46

18-May 19:57 2:09

19-May 23:08 5:20

20-May 20:12 2:24

21-May 23:18 5:30 Approx

22-May 19:55 2:07

23-May 20:22 2:34

24-May 19:00 1:12

25-May 23:46 5:58

26-May 23:46 5:58

27-May 18:22 0:34

28-May 19:18 1:30

5/12 & 21 times I estimated based on the arrival in Albany. I think the reporting system gave up since they were so late.

So it's only been really on time once this month, and within about 1/2 hour late 6 out of 28 days for 21.4%. It's only 14.3% if you strictly use Amtrak's 30 minute OTP rule. Today is showing an estimate on Amtrak's web site. For a trip that should take 19 hours 18 minutes, some of those delay times are a significant ratio of the trip.

I'm using up almost all my AGR points on this trip. I've only taken a few long distance trips, but looking at the CHI and NYP daily results on Trainorders, it's just too unreliable for any more. I know some people here like more time on the train, but there's a point for me where customer expectations aren't met.

 

[Anderson]

" I think we can all agree that Amtrak will have fewer and fewer government dollars to spend as time goes on."

I certainly don't agree. The opposite has clearly been the trend over the last decade, and I have no reason to believe it will not continue to be, especially considering ridership and political trends.

I hate to be a bother, but what trend are you referring to? Aside from a spike in funding in 2009-10, the trend as of late has been steadily down, with no visible change in the political climate that would reverse it.

 

[Paulus]

Just curious: Is it possible to adjust a setting in the board software to limit the number of times you can get a quote within a quote automatically or possibly to upgrade to another set of software if necessary? It gets a bit annoying to have to dig them out sometimes and incredibly annoying when others don't (I've literally had to scroll past single character lines on mobile the quoteception was so bad).

The cost to benefit ratio on that would be amazingly bad. Even if it costs less than other modes, that's not necessarily an argument for doing it.

That really depends. If one of each (the Builder and the NCH) run as a "local" hitting virtually any town that will fund a station with a flag stop (perhaps requiring tickets to be purchased by a certain time a la the Canadian) while the other runs as an "express", only hitting major towns, I think there's a decent case to be made for this. Additionally, those four trains would almost inevitably offer multiple good options CHI-MSP and SEA-SPK.
I would point out that Williston, for example, may be in a position to offer 100k+ riders/year, and it is very unlikely that any of the cities in North Dakota are going to end up with affordable passenger flights anytime soon.

Would you be running them as just a corridor train basically and the express a typical long distance train with sleepers and diners? You'd have better performance, but the marginal cost of operations for that (Corridor Builder, Hiawathas, and Pioneer) is probably somewhere around an additional $220 million per year ($280 if all frequencies are sleepers with diners), plus whatever capital and other allocated costs are involved. Sure you'll have some farebox recovery, but I'd be surprised if they did much better than the 55% (of allocated) costs that the Builder is currently doing.

 

[neroden]

I think it's pretty clear at this point that the "can't fly, refuse to drive" crowd is not nearly large enough

I think it's clearly large enough to keep *some* trains operating. I'm not sure how many, but my guess based on population patterns is at least NY-Chicago and Chicago-LA (SW Chief). Consider that regularly scheduled ocean liner service, as distinct from cruise service, still exists from London to New York.
The rest of the trains have different clientele; the Empire Builder is basically providing a way to get in and out of a bunch of isolated towns in ND and MT, for example. The Coast Starlight has its isolated towns as well. The California Zephyr west of Denver has all those skiing areas, and the "land cruise" traffic, and at the west end has Reno. Denver-Chicago is a perfectly good corridor. The Texas Eagle is really on an incredibly excellent corridor route, it's just too damn slow and unreliable; if it were as fast as driving and ran on time, I think it would absolutely boom.

At this point the Sunset Limited does not have a meaningful clientele. The people who ride it regularly seem to complain that it's not practical, which is a very bad sign.

to keep the Western trains operating within the realm of what America's government is willing to fund. That's not a knock against you so much as a reminder that Amtrak has to do what it can to remain relevant in today's market. I think we can all agree that Amtrak will have fewer and fewer government dollars to spend as time goes on.

Actually, I disagree on this. I think Amtrak will have more and more government money to spend. It will take a few years before that happens; we have to get past the demographic tipping point, which is very close to my birth year. My age is actually the median age in the US, but since people under 18 can't vote, it's going to be another decade or two before it's the median *voter* age.

The shift to ever-increasing government funding of Amtrak will happen sooner in some states than in others, *and it already is happening in some states*. I think Amtrak is now receiving more state government money than Amtrak has ever received before. Eventually the trend will filter up to the federal government, but as I say, it'll take a while.

However, an awful lot of that future government money is going to go to short corridors, huge numbers of which are desperately needed all over the country. Allentown-Philadelphia and Allentown-NYC are each more valuable than any of the western trains, IMNSHO, and I can list off several dozens of corridors like that without much thought.

We're already witnessing this dynamic: Amtrak now has to decide between spending money funding operations for western transcons, or spending money on capital improvements for other (better) routes, whether it's NEC improvements or new Viewliners or purchasing the bridge across the Niagara River.

You can see the mood clearly tilting towards the latter. I can't really argue with this, since the capital improvements end up giving us more service overall. Frankly, if cancelling the Sunset Limited gets us 20 more Viewliners, I'd do it, because I can immediately think of deployments for those Viewliners which would be more popular than the Sunset Limited and cost less to run.

I think we can also agree that there is only a finite amount that Amtrak can raise fares before they will begin to price themselves out of the market.

Yeah, though I don't know how high that is. It seems to be astronomically high on the LSL, but much lower on the western transcons. *This* is clearly a problem for the western transcons.

Assuming we can agree on those two points then over a long enough timeline some of the current routes will need to be cut in order to save other routes.

I'm not sure this is the case. It really is a question of what needs to be done to get through the next couple of decades, since after that Amtrak's funding is going to increase. Routes which have political support, such as the Empire Builder, will find funding somehow. I don't see much hope for the Sunset Limited, where service seems to be below the level where it gets votes. (That level is probably "daily".)
On another matter, the Lake Shore Limited timekeeping is almost entirely the fault of CSX, which needs to be smacked down by the Surface Transportation Board for its blatant lawbreaking. New York State is planning to build separate passenger tracks (once NY comes up with funding) essentially because of the illegal delays caused by CSX. There is also some trouble in the final Chicago approach on NS, but that should be fixed by the already-under-construction Englewood Flyover and Indiana Gateway projects; NS is a pretty responsible host.

I'll respond to CHamliton's very interesting comment in a second...

 

[jis]

Would you be running them as just a corridor train basically and the express a typical long distance train with sleepers and diners? You'd have better performance, but the marginal cost of operations for that (Corridor Builder, Hiawathas, and Pioneer) is probably somewhere around an additional $220 million per year ($280 if all frequencies are sleepers with diners), plus whatever capital and other allocated costs are involved. Sure you'll have some farebox recovery, but I'd be surprised if they did much better than the 55% (of allocated) costs that the Builder is currently doing.

I am curious, what makes a corridor Builder all that different from a Palmetto? Population density on the route? Total running time? It is true that the short distance O/D pair numbers the further south you go tend to become lower in case of the Palmetto.

 

[Paulus]

Would you be running them as just a corridor train basically and the express a typical long distance train with sleepers and diners? You'd have better performance, but the marginal cost of operations for that (Corridor Builder, Hiawathas, and Pioneer) is probably somewhere around an additional $220 million per year ($280 if all frequencies are sleepers with diners), plus whatever capital and other allocated costs are involved. Sure you'll have some farebox recovery, but I'd be surprised if they did much better than the 55% (of allocated) costs that the Builder is currently doing.

I am curious, what makes a corridor Builder all that different from a Palmetto? Population density on the route? Total running time? It is true that the short distance O/D pair numbers the further south you go tend to become lower in case of the Palmetto.

Corridor Builder would be just like the Palmetto. I just used the term to represent an all coach Empire Builder frequency was all (probably because I was using state supported corridor train marginal costs for it).

 

[afigg]

" I think we can all agree that Amtrak will have fewer and fewer government dollars to spend as time goes on."

I certainly don't agree. The opposite has clearly been the trend over the last decade, and I have no reason to believe it will not continue to be, especially considering ridership and political trends.

I hate to be a bother, but what trend are you referring to? Aside from a spike in funding in 2009-10, the trend as of late has been steadily down, with no visible change in the political climate that would reverse it.

Well, Amtrak did get a small bump in federal funding in the FY14 appropriations from $1.34 billion total in the sequestered FY13 appropriations to $1.39 billion total for FY14. This was the first increase in direct federal funding since $1.555 Billion total in FY10. I don't have the total direct appropriation amounts prior to FY07 handy, but Amtrak funding started to improve the latter part of the Bush years, especially after the Dems got control of Congress in the 2006 elections.

By direct funding, I mean the funds that are directly provided to Amtrak in the annual appropriations. There has been a lot of federal funds provided through other means: the $420 million from the Treasury to exercise the Early Buyout Options in the Warrington era leases, the $1.3 billion in stimulus funds, the federal HSIPR grants, and Sandy relief funds. The spike in 2009 to 2010 was pretty large with the HSIPR and TIGER grants which will continue to be spent through 2017 and 2018. But sorting all those funds out is a challenge, so set those aside, except to note that Amtrak and the NEC should get a boost from the Sandy mitigation funds which will help make up for the austerity budgets imposed by the House.

What has increased over the past 3-4 years has been the share of the federal money going to the general capital category. The early buyouts and close-out of lease payments has reduced the debt service amount from $285 million in FY09 to $177 million in FY14. The operating grant has shrunk from $475 million in FY09 and $580 million in FY10 to $340 million in FY14 (however Amtrak did use surpluses in the operating grant for capital projects). Then adding the state subsidy payments increases in FY14, more of the appropriations can go to capital. (The ADA compliance and NEC Gateway engineering set-asides are included in the total for capital.)

So in FY11, after the House did its cuts, the total capital was $658. In FY14, the total is $863 million. Not enough to pay for new rolling stock and getting the NEC to a state of good repair, but still more to work with. We will see what happens with the FY15 budget, but my guess is that Amtrak will get about the same total in FY15 as in FY14. Which will leave the LD trains in a holding pattern.

 

[neroden]

Parts of the CS do well enough. But SEA-EUG is covered by the Cascades corridor, and SAC-SJC-SLO has other corridor service, as does SBA-LAX. We need Coast Starlight/Daylight frequencies, and timekeeping that is as reliable as the corridor services, but that's very hard to do on the coast line. As things stand, unless they are going to places outside the corridors, very few riders will choose the CS over the local services. Especially now that amenities like the wine tastings have gone away.

Note also that the areas that are not covered by other corridors have miserable station times. A Seattle friend has been wanting to visit her mother in Redding for several years now, but she just can't face the 2-3am schedule.

Thanks for this analysis. My first thought was that this suggested that the Coast Starlight schedule should be rearranged.
Unfortunately, after trying this for a while, it seems that the real problem is that the train is simply too slow. The Coast Starlight is averaging 40 mph (including station stops etc.)

If the Coast Starlight could be made faster (sigh), then a schedule could be arranged which left Seattle at, say, 5 AM, and arrived Emeryville at midnight. This would only require an average speed of 48 mph (cutting 3.5 hours off the schedule). That would open up a lot of possibilities.

By way of contrast, the LSL's average speed from Albany to Chicago, when on time, is over 55 mph, and it's about 53 mph from NYC to Albany. (From Boston to Albany, however, it's 36 mph; this is tolerated by people only because of the short 200 mile distance, the low road speeds in the area, and the heavy road traffic near Boston. And it's currently being sped up from Worcester to Boston.)

The next question is *why* the Coast Starlight is so slow. Part of it is certainly mountains; there are two pairs of horseshoe curves (Cascade Loops and Cantara Loops), which are big time-wasters. Part of it is curves, slaloming back and forth to follow the river valley. Part of it is that there appear to be some urban speed restrictions.

Anyway, to make the Coast Starlight route work, it needs to be faster.

Half an hour could be cut off in Portland by reducing dwell time, and another hour simply by running as fast as the corridor routes; but you'd need to cut another 2 hours to make a viable daytime route from California to Oregon.

It might be possible to raise the speed limits in some areas without route realignment. Particularly south of San Jose, where the speed limits seem artificially slow. Tilting trains might allow faster travel along the entire route.

After that, it looks like a number of cutoff tunnels, bridges, and cuts would be necessary to straighten the route. This is the sort of thing which is done fairly routinely on corridor routes, and which used to be done by profitable private railroads (on the routes in the East, you can usually see the old follow-the-river routes and the cutoffs made to bypass the bends). However, there simply isn't the commitment to this for the Coast Starlight route. Because the states have other priorities -- including doing the same thing on their shorter "corridor" routes, which is *always* going to take precedence.

In the East, good "corridors" cover a very large percentage of the "long-distance" routes -- but in the case of the northern part of the Coast Starlight, not so much. To get better speed overall, improvements would probably be needed in the area which isn't shared with any likely corridors, namely Sacramento to Eugene, where the population is just low. This should be maintained for basic connectivity to the Pacific Northwest, but I don't see it getting much better any time soon.

The southern portion of the Coast Starlight looks more promising. I can see no reason why the speed limits are so slow from San Jose to Los Angeles.

http://www.donwinter.com/Railroad%20Infrastructure%20and%20Traffic%20Data/Trunk%20Routes/%28Pacific%29%20Coast%20Line/Route%20Descriptions/Ventura%20to%20Gilroy.htm

And all of this southern area *is* viable "corridor" territory. If California decided to invest in a Coast Daylight, it really should be possible to make it faster -- get rid of all those 35 mph zones and bring speeds up from 60 to 80. Again, you might want tilting trains.

 

[CHamilton]

Hmm. How to cut 3.5 hours off the CS's running time. Let's try it on train 11 southbound -- northbound is similar, but has padding in somewhat different places.

Current time Reasonable time Reduction

SEA-TAC 0:44 0:35 0:09

TAC-OLW 0:50 0:30 0:20 (effective 2017, when bypass is done)

OLW-CTL 0:24 0:24 0:00

CTL-KEL 0:44 0:40 0:04

KEL-VAN 0:39 0:29 0:10 (effective 2017, when trackwork is done)

VAN-PDX 0:52 0:22 0:30 (reduce padding, upgrade Columbia bridge)

PDX 0:35 0:20 0:15 (reduce dwell time)

PDX-SLM 1:12 0:45 0:27

SLM-ALY 0:33 0:33 0:00

ALY-EUG 1:00 0:50 0:10

EUG-CMO 2:58 2:58 0:00 (not much can be done without major work)

CMO-KFS 1:58 1:20 0:38 (reduce padding, dwell time at KFS)

KFS-SAC 8:35 7:45 0:50 (reduce padding, dwell time at SAC)

If I did the math right, we've already cut 2:33 before leaving SAC without changing running speed. I don't know the southern portion of the route as well, but IIRC, we could cut 0:20 at SJC, 0:10 at SLO, 0:15 at SBA, and 0:10 approaching LAX, for a total reduction of 3:28. Of course, this assumes that there are no breakdowns, derailments, and freight or Metrolink traffic problems, but yes, such a schedule is feasible.

Having achieved faster running times, though, do we really want the endpoint times you propose? I'd be more inclined to leave the EMY time alone, and add a second frequency with your times. So the Starlight schedule would look something like this.

SEA 1:00pm

PDX 4:00pm

EUG 7:00pm

KFS 11:00pm

SAC 6:30am

EMY 8:00am

SBA 5:00pm

LAX 7:30pm

 

[neroden]

And Minnesota has a Wisconsin problem: they aren't going to put up the money unless Wisconsin does...not likely at present. (Although it has been suggested that a MN-supported train could be called "The Golden Gopher" and painted appropriately. That might annoy the WI folks enough to get them to pony up some support.)

I've suggested that a St. Paul - Chicago train should run express through Wisconsin, via the BNSF route, and stop in East Dubuque, IL on its way to Chicago.
This would probably be sufficient to put a scare into Wisconsin. It would probably please Illinois's governor, who has been trying to figure out how to serve the Dubuque area when CN won't cooperate. It would also bypass any problems with CP. (Having ridden this route during a detour, the only area which really needs track and signal work to support passenger service is the yard and diamond at LaCrosse.)

 

[steve in cleveland]

When the private railroads wanted to discourage people from taking passenger trains back in the 1960s, what did they do? They eliminated the amenities....think of November 1967, when New York Central removed the Lookout Lounge, the double-dining-car, and even the NAME from the 20th Century Limited....yes, the train from New York to Chicago continues to this day as the Lake Shore Limited, but the true first class amenities have been gone since 1967----and now they want to remove what little "pampering" is left. My guess is it is the same purpose, to discourage people from going on the train. As someone posted above, these amenities cost practically nothing, but they are the only little trinkets you get for paying First Class fare. We've seen this nonsense before with Amtrak, too....stopping the cloth table cloths, and then restoring them, then removing them....it all shows arrogant disregard for the customer. McDonald's Hamburger billionaire Ray Kroc always said "If you have a dispute with a customer, even if you win the dispute, you LOSE----you lose the customer. Always make the customer happy."

 

[henryj]

Then lets start by eliminating the NEC. "I think we can agree" that after the November elections Amtrak will be gone. Replace by different operators that can actually run trains without the bloated overhead and politics. So all the wishful thinking that by eliminating one or two trains we can save the rest is just baloney. We need to add routes that have been taken away, not eliminate the few we have left. Nothing will happen until after November. Then it's going to get really interesting. I can hardly wait.

I think it's pretty clear at this point that the "can't fly, refuse to drive" crowd is not nearly large enough to keep the Western trains operating within the realm of what America's government is willing to fund. That's not a knock against you so much as a reminder that Amtrak has to do what it can to remain relevant in today's market. I think we can all agree that Amtrak will have fewer and fewer government dollars to spend as time goes on. I think we can also agree that there is only a finite amount that Amtrak can raise fares before they will begin to price themselves out of the market. Assuming we can agree on those two points then over a long enough timeline some of the current routes will need to be cut in order to save other routes.

 

[Paulus]

I'm feeling confident that Congress' inability to do anything at all will preserve Amtrak, no matter what happens in the elections.

 

[neroden]

Amtrak apparently has access to short-term loans again (as of this January, when Amtrak borrowed money to pay off old early-buyout options on equipment leases), which is actually a very big deal. This makes it much easier for Amtrak to sit out stupid short-term (less-than-a-year) funding crises like the "government shutdown" stuff.

 

[haolerider]

Then lets start by eliminating the NEC. "I think we can agree" that after the November elections Amtrak will be gone. Replace by different operators that can actually run trains without the bloated overhead and politics. So all the wishful thinking that by eliminating one or two trains we can save the rest is just baloney. We need to add routes that have been taken away, not eliminate the few we have left. Nothing will happen until after November. Then it's going to get really interesting. I can hardly wait.

I think it's pretty clear at this point that the "can't fly, refuse to drive" crowd is not nearly large enough to keep the Western trains operating within the realm of what America's government is willing to fund. That's not a knock against you so much as a reminder that Amtrak has to do what it can to remain relevant in today's market. I think we can all agree that Amtrak will have fewer and fewer dgovernment dollars to spend as time goes on. I think we can also agree that there is only a finite amount that Amtrak can raise fares before they will begin to price themselves out of the market. Assuming we can agree on those two points then over a long enough timeline some of the current routes will need to be cut in order to save other routes.

Amtrak has gotten fewer and fewer dollars from the government for the past several years. As revenue and ridership go , the need for government dollars goes down.
As far as Amtrak going away after the November elections, I think that is just pure poor thinking & getting rid of the NEC is simply stupid! The only place that Amtrak owns track and a very steady piece of revenue that continues to grow as air service continues to be a problem for corporate travelers. Doom & gloom thinking seems to be more prevelant than in past years. Perhaps the elimination of amenities has become a rallying point for negative thinking.

 

[jis]

Interestingly, much to my chagrin I discovered a few weeks back that Aclea travel has joined air travel in the eyes of the corporate travel bean counters. Officially, the large multi-national that I work for, does not allow travel in Acela (any class) for a trip paid for by the company. If you take rail it is only Regionals on the NEC! Acelas have just priced themselves out of the range that the bean counters will tolerate. The only time they allow it is if I can show that the Acela bucket that is available is cheaper than or the same as all Regionals (and alternative air of course) that are available within a certain time window around the proposed departure time. Luckily this does happen sometimes on very early morning or late evening Acelas.

 

[Bob Dylan]

Bet your CEO and the other VIP Suits havent given up the corporate jets and don't ride in steerage when flying commercial! Do they allow the employees to pay the difference to upgrade themselves if they want to and do y'all get to keep your mileage and point awards for frequent travel?

 

[jis]

Bet your CEO and the other VIP Suits havent given up the corporate jets and don't ride in steerage when flying commercial! Do they allow the employees to pay the difference to upgrade themselves if they want to and do y'all get to keep your mileage and point awards for frequent travel?

The Executive Council I suppose has special dispensation for BC, but a plain old VP does not. Same rules apply to them. However, if you travel more than a certain amount you get to use BC for international flights, not for domestic though. But then Domestic even I get complementary upgraded half the time. There have even been situations where I was sitting in First with a complementary upgrade on a domestic flight while my VP was walking to steerage. So I have no complaints in that respect.

Yes, employees keep all miles and vendor provided perks, and can choose to use either those, or their own money or combo to upgrade any sector they wish. I often do so on international sectors. It simply is not worth it on domestic sectors at least the way I see it. If I get a comp upgrade fine, if not that is fine too. Usually I snag a good bulkhead seat anyway, using my status. I have even self paid upgraded to Sleeper on Amtrak for a business trip to Savannah. The accounting for it is a bit complicated, but it is doable. And yes, you get to keep both the company paid and personally paid for points.

An interesting secret is that very often if the Acela fare is less than the air fare, they will usually wink wink it through even though it is higher than Regional and strictly speaking is contrary to policy. Such is the reality....

 

[Bob Dylan]

Thanks jis, words of wisdom from the travel master!( I used to be one back in the day and I worked for the Government! LOL)

 

[tonys96]

Way back in the first of this thread, there were many here saying the "amenities" cuts were no big deal. They would save jobs and/or routes.......fast forward to today where the AT has been decimated and the LD menus are being trimmed and the rumor has it that soon sleeper pax will have to pay for meals in the diner........I wonder if it is still no big deal?