Given that the Gulf airlines' expansion is a real threat to LH/*A on one set of routes, and BA/QF/CX are long standing, generally high quality competitors on another set, this is the kind of customer migration they're going to want to avoid.

Mrs IMH and I are small fry, non-corporate fliers who pay our own way. Two or three TATL a year in C (typically one redemption and one or two in paid Z), one or two other long haul trips (TPAC or Europe-Asia) and a couple of dozen short hauls within W. Europe or the US. Overall, the airlines make money out of us.

We'll be able to adapt to and benefit from M&M: we typically travel together, so we can take advantage of SEN companion redemptions, and it should be reasonably easy to alternate between qualifying years, with plenty of paid travel, and years in which we ease off a little and redeem some miles.

But there's no doubt that the process of adapting will be easier, and the willingness to do it greater, if we don't start off with LH treating us like freeloaders.

LH can presumably crunch the numbers and look at the spending and travel patterns of 'matched' SN status members. I'm guessing that it will have paid off for LH in enough cases to have been worthwhile.