Where the term "cockroach" came from

Found at www.usaviation.com
8/30/2002 12:15:33 AM from deelmakur:

Just checked my transcon for next Friday out of PHL. Sure enough, both Mrs. Deelmakur (she's US2, another freeloading cockroach like me) and I are in the compartment. Found it had been done a half hour before midnight. Guess res wasn't so busy with that stuff. Anyway, I can get into a CRS, so I pulled the map. Looks like us and one other. The company better be careful. With only 24 seats left in First, and fares as low as two thousand bucks round trip, those will go like hotcakes in the next 6 days. But not to worry, we'll get those cheap *******s out of that compartment soon enough. Let 'em take their 3 million lifetime miles over to somebody else. This here's the airline of the stars.

What is a cockroach?

From USA Today article...

Ben Baldanza, US Airways' senior marketing executive, says his carrier is trying to reward coach-class passengers for the amount they spend, not how much they fly. He says the change will not turn away as many loyal customers as others think.

 

"Someone who flies a lot isn't necessarily loyal if what they're doing is buying the lowest-priced ticket every time they fly," he says. "That's not necessarily the kind of loyalty we want to reward. We want to reward those people who pay a premium for the services we offer."

Arrzee

A cockroach is a FF business traveler who takes advantage of low cost, nonrefundable fares to conduct business trips instead of buying full fare Y and B tickets that Ben Baldanza says we should be buying. Otherwise you are not a loyal FF to US because taking advantage of freely available low cost fares put US into bankruptcy.

biggs

Cockroach: Defined as a loyal customer who gives all his or her business to USAirways, in return for a pretty generous FF plan. That individual abides by the rules, as set by the airline, pays ticket prices established by the company, and never takes a seat they could sell to somebody for real money. Then suddenly, they are publicly declared "disloyal" by various officers of the company, and singled out as the root cause of all its problems. For this, and in recognition of our ability to single-handedly cause the downfall of USAirways (which, of course, has never made a bad planning or operating decision), we proudly wear the mantle of COCKROACH (or in the case of high mile roaches, CP, as in Cockroach Preferred). How else do you think we got into those seats?

cockroach