SuiteFlight

The only downsides with status matches is giving status to those who predominantly fly on the cheapest Y tickets - status to them is all upside, but all downside to the airline (margins in Y typically being very thin, their food & beverage consumption alone in the lounge may exceed any benefit gained by the airline).

The thing that weeds this traveller out is that they typically don't get high status with other airlines hence not able to status match to Platinum/Gold.

Some airlines have even limited the impact of this traveller (for those that managed to get a high status to request match to, or are using the status of a partner) by controlling access to the main premium lounges if travelling in Economy by diverting to a more basic lounge (allowing only the top tiers - usually too high for the discount Y traveller to reach - access).

Regardless, let's not confuse having frequent flyer "status" (or not having) as having anything to do with how you are as a person, or that's it about elevating one from the riff-raff (it's not a peerage ). It's also a bit silly giving it airs and graces, or suggesting it's about out-Jonesing others.

Beyond the benefits it offers, the only thing I think it typically think it represents is that you travel well, travel often, or both. Remember that status matches are not open ended invitations, any status given is limited in time and must be earnt fully to be retained - and that you have to have similar status already to get such temporary status (not a free for all)

DudeE

Assuming you mean Y status versus paying for a business class seat? Y class fares are definitely not "the cheapest" and, in most cases, are the most expensive within economy class. I earned my status through nothing but economy-class travel due to my employer's policy, and met the same PQD as anyone else. I question whether I'm a drag on their profits.

TPJ

It is now virtually impossible to get a meaningful status (*A Gold, OWE/OWS) by flying on the cheapest Y tickets. I mean - in theory possible - but I guess after spending hundreds of hours in cramped Y seats, DVT will kill you before you start enjoying SEN or BA Gold privileges

PS. Until 2014 it was actually achievable, but in 2014/early 2015 programs that previously were crediting at least 100% miles even for the lowest booking classes (TK, SK, BA, AA) changed their policies.

kuroko

SuiteFlight meant Y tickets as in Economy tickets and not Y fare tickets. iirc there are some Plats here, mostly flying Economy.

I guess the chance is very small that you get a status match to Platinum, I assume EK France has maybe 1-2 'cards' for new Plats. passenger would have to have future confirmed bookings and a top tier status with another airline (maybe HON with a lot of EU-Asia/Africa flights) and a historical flying pattern which matches' EK route map.

In my opinion the concern that EK is getting more and more Platinum because of that is not justified. in the end, you can always ask for a status match but EK is one of the 'hardest' to get a match (normally they match you to Silver as a BA Gold etc). Also with the new SW earning since February it will be a lot harder to achieve Platinum if you fly only in Y with some C tickets, so number of Plats will certainly decrease.

blue2002

amen^

SuiteFlight

As the phrasing "cheapest Y tickets" illustrates, I was referring to sale/discount Y fares (the cheapest seats on the plane), not the fully flexible Economy bucket (if you are paying fully flex economy, you can hit top tier, but the vast majority of economy passengers don't travel on fully flexible economy fares).

If your employer is choosing and paying for your fares, then you personally have zero impact on airline profits/losses, so even with grabbing the wrong end of the stick it's a bit illogical you took it as personal slight (based on your misunderstanding).

To avoid further misunderstanding, the "downside" was from the airline's perspective and not a personal slant on economy travellers (if you read the post in full, it's clear I don't believe that travel class/status has any meaning at all in terms of what sort of person you are - whether you are at the front or the back of the plane).

SuiteFlight

That's my point really, there aren't swarms of discount travellers who will win big on these types of status matches (for current high status flyers to start decrying the devaluation of their benefits because the great unwashed will fill the lounges), because - while these people would benefit the most - they are mostly ineligible (that's a huge amount of discount Y flying to be eligible - few are that unlucky/insane).

So the sky really isn't falling in.

In full agreement about earning top tier status through heavy Y flying - I'd rather be dead than go through such a hard grind.

DudeE

I'm not misunderstanding anything. In fact I assumed correctly you did not mean Y class fares but discounted economy tickets. You might be interested to know that plenty of corporate travelers do, in fact, purchase full-fare flexible economy tickets. I'd add that with 150% PQM accrual it's actually not that hard to achieve status (even with discounted economy tickets). I banked 50,000 PQM by July of this year and will likely exit the year at around 80,000 based on nothing but economy class travel.

Aside from that, I do choose when to travel, where to travel, and on what airline regardless of who's paying. I'm not sure of your point in supposing that I 'personally have zero impact on airline profits/losses' or how you reached the conclusion that I have no choices when it comes to air travel. But back to the real point. How do you suppose those achieving status with economy fares are less profitable? That PQD thing pretty much levels the playing field does it not?

SuiteFlight

There's a wide gap between adult discourse and shade throwing - scorn that drips of "how very dare you", particularly when it creates something that wasn't there (and doesn't even fess up - your original post clearly didn't think it was about discount Y but full fare Y bucket as others have pointed out), is rather ridiculous.

But if you have have wrongly assumed presumptuous tone when none was applied, then I can only express sorrow for your misconstruction. Sometimes, no matter what anyone says or what the facts support, people will steadfastly refuse to depart from their own assumptions

You can easily check IATA figures on the contribution of economy fares to airline profit margins, they are far far lower than premium class fares (because there are only incremental costs to airlines in providing premium classes, especially given it is not possible to cram everyone onto some aircraft types that predominately serve international routes due to technical/engineering/legal constraints). Economy predominately covers costs for airlines, with a little bit left over (overall), where margins really expand is in premium cabins and where profits are bulked up.

As to your assertion that the Economy cabin is loaded with fully flexible Y fare corporate travellers, do you have any facts to back that up? I know of few businesses that require their employees to fly economy long-haul (and we are talking about Emirates, a long haul carrier, not SouthWest or some other domestic bunny hop airline), most at least cough up for premium economy and business class. The vast majority of people in a Y cabin on international services (and domestic too, for that matter) are on discount fares, not fully flex tickets.

Given, as others have acknowledged, that I explicitly stated that top tier frequent flyer status does not mean anything other than you fly well, fly a lot, or both, it's nonsensical to suggest I take a different tune with respect to cabins.

You just seem to be digging a bigger hole for yourself. I thought "dudes" were supposed to be chilled lol.

SuiteFlight

That middle claim is interesting - how does that work? Do you just tell work "I want to go to Venice" and they just cough up an Economy ticket (no commercial reason required). Let's us know who you work for, that's one very generous CFO

eternaltransit

Obviously someone travelling on a full Y fare is a profitable customer, with excellent margins. However, bringing the topic back to EK slightly - Tier Miles are generally aligned with revenue, not mileage. US programs did the same thing explicitly by introducing minimum revenue requirements. Other programs did it through adjusting fare basis earning rates (either through miles or a separate status credit system). Premium fares with higher margin have more capacity to award status, which is obvious.

Thus, SuiteFlight's point is that the "loophole" - aka, where a company would take a loss - whereupon someone who drives negligible profits (aka low margin revenue) is given a status with privileges that end up costing the company money is minimal, as that travel pattern wouldn't qualify for a match in the first place (due to new adjusted earning rates in the "home" program, and by review by EK).

To illustrate specifically: say you spend 10000 USD in discount Y on EK in 20 trips - you're probably going to drive about 100 USD in profits to EK. If you gave them status and they consumed 20 USD worth of lounge, you're now down 100-400 USD = -300 USD. Hence why 20 trips in discount Y on EK won't give you any status.

Different airlines of course have different margin calculations. If an airline can afford to give someone status on a lot of discount economy trips, that is a matter for that airline: whether the "discount" is truly "discounted", whether the routes those fares are offered are operating at absurdly high margins in any case, whether the privileges granted by status actually cost anything. To the airline, headline fares don't really matter when it comes to the FFP - their margin and the cost of status provision mean more. One could argue that status on US airlines costs those airlines less than global equivalents, given the lack of domestic lounge access (and you have to pay for things in those lounges! )

DudeE's point that you can gain top-tier status flying in Y is almost trivially incidental to the main point which is about the dangers (i.e. potential loss) to an airline about giving away status. If you qualify for the match you already purchase high margin fares.

SuiteFlight

Ah a return to the purpose of this thread, as always thoughtful consideration from eternaltransit.

My key points to be taken from #46
- There will not be hordes of low profit customers swarming Etihad lounges (as was inferred earlier in this thread) because this like for like status match still requires you to be a high tier elsewhere (and at the moment is limited to people with addresses in France, as an aside) and that's very difficult for low profit discount economy customers to achieve.
- Some airlines even it make it harder for those that do reach top tiers in low profit tickets, by redirecting them to secondary lounges that are nowhere near as nice as the J/F lounges (SQ SIN Gold lounge as an example) if flying Economy.
- Frequent Flyer status means little beyond airline benefits.

Frequent Flyer schemes have little to do with rewarding loyalty or even that much with how much time you spend on an airplane - they are all about marketing, making customers sticky, generating lots of data mining opportunities, commercialising passengers, and instilling FOMO lol. Airlines have got far more out of frequent flyer programs than passenger ever have - hence why they are widespread.

As for margin spread - it typically descends from fat margins in First, to Business, to Flex Y, to discount Y often just covering operating costs - but as eternaltransit highlights you also have influence from premium routes as well (although that doesn't typically upset the hierarchy). Most airlines reflect this by awarding lower status earn and lower points earn for discount economy travel to higher grade travel on the same flight (a 'light' revenue based system) - however even a set amount of points/credit per dollar spent system (full revenue based system) won't accurately track seat margin/profit (in case anyone was wondering).

bodory

Following their logic, only existing EK member are likely to be matched since they do not require a printout of flying pattern to be sent along with the FFP card, while at the same time they seem to be interested in pax flying their own routes.

cmustudent

Hey,

Have any of you guys been successfully matched yet?

im.daniel

No not yet, sent in application - and received a response asking for travel patterns 2 (?) weeks ago, yet to hear from them.