michelw

So then in my case, I don't have to fly 60 segments next year, right? And then, Gajan really does not need to requalify this year.

And yes, thanks Pauillac for the explanation.

Pauillac

yes just make really sure to reach 60 segments this year if you qualify by segments

San Gottardo

I read all the threads related to that topic some years ago when I was approaching that 10 year threshold. I was profoundly confused, just in the same way that this thread has now reached its 3rd page and still noone knows for sure.

So I just went on qualifying myself and then sometime around March the status of my account showed "Platinum for life". I did not understand the maths back then and I still don't understand them now. And since I do not remember which year I became Plat for Life I cannot reconstruct them either.

My advice is to just go on and requalify this year, which you need to do anyway. You then have to make a call in January: either you take a risk and assume that you have turned Plat for Life and stop flying any qualifying flights - but the risk is that you'll only find out three months later whether your assumption was correct; or you play it safe and just continue flying qualifying flights, and when in March you find out whether or not you are Plat for Life you can then still decide whether you want to do more qualifying flights because you'd do them anyway or say "I got the status locked in, I can now move to another FFP". So your only grey zone is January-March 2014. If you fly on AFKL and Skyteam airlines anyway during that period then the question is irrelevant anyway.

bodory

The topic has been extensively discussed on this board. I have made a complete post in the past but cannot find it anymore. A summary can nevertheless be found here : http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/16092522-post20.html

Edited : I found it :
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/flyin...w-rules-3.html

stimpy

I can confirm the FP Rouge deal that if you were Rouge before 2005, it really won't show your correct start date. Mine says...

Platinum Depuis 04-06-2005
Si vous conservez votre statut Platinum 1 année(s), vous deviendrez Platinum ŕ vie.

I've already requal'd this year so I'm pretty sure I'm done. But like San Gottardo says, it's really confusing and I won't count on it being done til I get notification. Which will hopefully happen next April.

Wow, it seems that by next year the majority of the regular posters here will be Platinum for Life. Will that mean that our forum will wind down to only a few posts?

ajs123

Don't worry too much. Those of us who have still quite a few years to go to reach LTPE, will keep complaining about everything

Gajan

My mother received an invitation for a special day for those who qualified for LTPE in 2012 for an event in June.

According to the invite, roughly 200 people in the Netherlands qualified for LTPE last year.

cityflyer369

Just a bit speculation:

Based on mere population size, the number of new Plat for life people per year in France could then be 700, so let's say altogether 1000 Plat for life in the Netherlands and France per year.
If say half of Plats for life are from other countries, this would give a total of 2000 Plats for life per year. With FB being roughly 10 years old and assuming iid random variables, there are about 20000 Plats for life. As FB has 16000000 members, that's about .1% of all FB members.
Plats for life travel more often than the average FB customers, but not neccessarily much more than the other Elite plus customers without life membership.
This means that one Plat for life per plane on average is probably a realistic order of magnitude.

If you have addtional data points or more plausible lines of analysis, feel free to update this calculation.

San Gottardo

I don't know any better but just to stress-test your assumptions: actually I think that more LTPEs are added these days than 10 years ago, that simply is the dynamic of the market. Frequent flyers actually fly more today than 10 years ago, the "base population" of FB members is bigger, plus there are more earning opportunities to reach status. On the other hand there were some "grandfathered" lifetime Plats coming over from the KLM programme which had this lifetime feature already before Flying Dutchman.

But what really struck me is the high number. Let's assume for a second that 20'000 is correct. That is *A LOT!!!* And it explains why there isn't any special recognition or service. I remember how the Miles & More management freaked out when they suddenly had around 5,000 members because there were too many to provide all the services to. So they cut down on some of the services (subtly, but they did), and most of all they made access stricter by limiting HON earning to Business and First Class fares. Their hope is to bring it down to 2,500 members. Emirates Platinum which was just launched has 5,500 members, on basically similar earning criteria like HON, i.e. 3 times the yearly earning of Gold/SEN - but hardly feels as exclusive as HON does (or maybe that is because after so many years of HON I am more hard to impress).

So with 20,000 people out there who all think they are something special *plus* all the non-lifetime Platinums it is obvious that nothing miraculous will happen to them in terms of service.

stimpy

Is it a lot? Relative to what? There are millions of FB members in total, right? And millions more who fly without joining a program.

And in comparison I'll bet there are now close to a million United 1MM'ers (Lifetime Gold) and a goodly number of 2MM'ers (Lifetime Platinum). A whole lot more than FB LTPE's.

San Gottardo

Relative a number of people small enough to be able to still offer something special to. It is the sheer number that in my mind explains why Platinum is "nothing special".

Do they get any special recognition or treatment? I don't know these programs.

stimpy

We used to get a few domestic upgrade coupons, but I think those went away with the Continental merger. But one benefit that is nice for some people is that you can name your wife (or husband or whatever shares your address) to have the same status as you. There might be some other small benefits, but for me the only benefit that really counts is Star Gold. Lifetime Star Gold means I don't have to worry about dealing with Miles and More. Living in France I'm never going to make HON anyways.

delanotre

French residents LTPE are not so many, due to harder qualification requirements.(no qualifying flights in France, and 30000 more status miles)

orbitmic

Well I don't know, when you think of the former "Club 2000" we are not talking very different numbers at all and it was never an issue to give them special treatment. I really don't think that even 20,000 (I agree that the assumptions made above are rather big assumptions to make for some of them) should certainly not be too large a number to treat well. Just think about how HSBC is good at dealing with its Premier customers or Amex its Centurion ones, we are talking numbers hundreds or thousands of times larger in both cases!

San Gottardo

I see what you mean and I agree.

But what I was thinking of were benefits that we often expressed as a wish list, such as "use of the Salon Premiere for Platinums". With >20,000 Platinums that is not possible. Lufthansa was struggling with 5,000, so AFKL would certainly struggle with 20,000.

The kind of services offered by HSBC or Amex are definitely higher than the norm but not super-exclusive. To me HSBC or Amex should be role models for Flying Blue Gold card holders, but Platinum should be more exclusive and have some more benefits.

Which shows that Platinum is an easy-to-achieve fourth tier but in return doesn't offer a lot. Different from HON Circle for instance, which requires a serious amount of flying.