Originally Posted by
pitbrian
I think FO will be less saturated next year because non-Medallions did not receive the 5/10/15k MQM boost. So a lot of current FOs will reach GM/PM easier, but most non-Medallions will have to work just as hard to get FO (in an environment where a lot of people are scaling back on personal and biz travel). I am going to venture that most non-Medallions did not benefit on the YBMHQK Double/Triple bonus earlier this year. I personally didn't because I had no business travel during that period and book my leisure travel early enough to avoid the higher fares.
The math still favors PM seeing the most inflation and GM the least, at least for the 5 & 10k bonuses. At the 15k level, the order goes PM (easiest), GM, DM.
Originally Posted by
Stripe
Keep in mind that all of your scenarios of elite inflation assume frequent flyers are flying as frequently now as they were, say, a year ago. But if that were the case no airline would be running these types of promotions. I would guess these EQM deals, applied to a lower amount of actual flying, will yield a total elite population not much bigger than before.
Agree 10,000%. I am certain that the airlines have targets for the numbers (or at least %s) of elites. If they were hitting those targets, they would not be doing this. As we all
know that AA has a far, far better elite system than DL and that
everyone is jumping ship, we can only assume that, since it is AA leading the charge, that things must be really dire for DL.