America West FlightFund (Discontinued Program) - Change to Upgrades

After looking at all the changes to the award chart, I took a look at the upgrade chart, and saw that soon all elites will be able to upgrade with miles, not just Plat.

The new policy lasted only 4 months. Do you all think this is a good thing?

http://www.americawest.com/flightfund/myffaccount/redeemingmiles/ff_upgrades.htm

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by JenniferNAz:

The new policy lasted only 4 months. Do you all think this is a good thing? </font>

Well, that depends upon your Elite status. It is definitely NOT a good thing if you are Platinum.

This reversal means that it will again be very easy for non-Platinum and non-Elite members in general to use miles to upgrade their dirt-cheap coach tickets to First using miles. That translates into far fewer First seats available for Elite upgrades, which can be a particular problem on the popular long-haul flights.

I was puzzled why they did this in the first place and one of the Platinum line supervisors told me that it was because it had become increasingly hard for top elite travelers to get upgraded on the long-haul flights and they wanted to change that. She said First was filling up with people buying the cheapest tickets and upgrading them using their miles, which was leaving the angry Platinum members back in coach. That was mighty thoughtful, I thought.

Apparently, they're not so concerned about us any more. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/frown.gif