It seems CX doesn't care for its "elite" tier flyers any longer. Back at the end of March I was flying to Los Angeles from HK. A friend of mine received a promotional email from Marco Polo club for "selected members" - mind you he is only a silver card member - offerign double mileage for flights to North America between 28th of March & 31st May 2008 - link to see what he got is here:

http://theclub.cathaypacific.com/dbm...cid=TM210E0803

(YES CX I have saved the page and will post it elsewhere if you do decide to take it offline.)

I thought to myself how perfect the timing was and immediately called up MPC to find out why I hadn't received this email. Initially (after a 30 minute wait on the phone) I was told this promotion was only for people with a US mailing address and advised on the phone to change my address then I will be able to register for this promo. Made no sense to me but I thought - OK I have family in the US and can use their address. No luck - it didn't work. Called up again and after another 30 minutes or so found out the promotion was only for people who had NOT flown to the US with CX for over 2 years or something like that.

I was FURIOUS at that - rather than rewarding us frequent fliers (I am diamond tier and have been for more than 5 or 6 years), they choose to reward infrequent travellers instead. There must only be a fraction of diamond card members who were eligible for this promotion which doesn't make any sense.

CX is making things worse for us frequent travellers and better for those that don't fly as much??? They are definitely earning more revenue from those of us that use mileage for upgrades as they have raised the minimum booking classes last year and now this...

If I didn't live in HK I would seriously considering using another airline. Truthfully CX service in flight has always been very good and still is, but its the ground service and pre-flight service which is now falling apart. Do they really think that we are uninformed travellers and will NOT find out about these kinds of promotions? What is the point of satisfying your infrequent travellers at the expense of those that keep coming back???

I have even written in to them about this but the response was pathetic - basically saying they weren't interested in doing anything about it.