Originally Posted by
transportbiz
I am a little surprised no one has seen the flaw in this proposal.
If one spends 30K to earn 75K EQM's then that person is already flying in First or Business First.
If one is to assume the primary objective of gaining this new "status" is to gain better opportunity to upgrades, then why exactly does this benefit matter? If you are already flying in the front of the cabin, right?
I assume most of the people who spend $30k will be earning meaningfully more than the 75k EQMs. But it doesn't have to be. 3 r/t full-fare flights EWR-HKG in BF will pretty much cost $30k and earn you 75k EQMs. Plenty of people work for companies that allow business travel on overseas flights but only domestic in the U.S., so it's certainly in the realm of possibility that a PresPlat will have a coach reservation on a domestic flight and therefore find real value in the higher upgrade priority.
So then the other "benefits" of this new status are to come into play: That being what a dedicated phone line? What value does this really represent again when you are flying First or Business First you already expect (rightly so) to be taken good care of.
Well, spend some time on the AA board. The Executive Platinum desk is valued
very highly over there. Now, CO's elite desk is pretty good overall, but I know that the EXP agents generally go above and beyond -- partly because they're so well-qualified, but also because I believe they are more empowered than the general pool of agents. So in the case of IRROPs, they may be more willing to protect a PresPlat onto another airline's flight, for example, without supervisory intervention.