This just goes to show you how the typical airline mentality is to take things away from their customers and effectively make the experience of using their product continually less enjoyable. When in doubt, let's just rip something away from our most frequent users.

I understand the underlying rationale: find a way to reward the customer that pays full fare more than the customer that flies on rock-bottom fares. I'm fine with that. Makes good business sense.

I think there are a few good examples of airlines that have tried to reward those fliers without kicking everyone else in the teeth: AA using Q-points to get premium fliers to Plat/EXP faster, providing easier or complimentary upgrades to full-Y customers, etc.

I hope the industry follows some of these examples to reward the high-revenue passenger without making everyone else's travel experience unpleasant.