This has always been the question common to all FF programs. And seldom if ever answered. How many elites are out there? How exclusive of a group are we? Well, a plain brown envelope was in my mailbox this afternoon -- actually it was a white airmail envelop with those funny blue and red stripes -- and I am now in possession of the Roseta Stone of Aeroplan!

There are lots of goodies to be found in the small print, though much of it is what we already know from our own experience and fro m what is contained in the guides that come with our elite kits. Though it is interesting to read all of this infoirmation from the other side of the check-in counter. I plan to be discrete about much of the contents, but will share a few things that I don't believe will compromise AC's future in any way, and which might shed light on questions we have pondered on the site for quite a while.

So, for the first of these revelations...

And from our point of view, what I believe to be the biggest secret this guide holds is the fact that we are -- all except Empress, of course, and maybe FlyBoy and a few others who have pages of notes in the PNRs -- considered by AC to be very important to their corporate well being. As AC unveiled Aeroplan 2001/2 for its staff, it forecast that there would be about 10K SuperElite members, each of whom generates $50K of business for the company, or half a billion dollars!

There would be another 83K Elites, representing an average of $18K in businesss each, for $1.5 billion annually. And at the base of the peak of the pyramid -- there are 5.7 million Aeroplan members in total -- 210K Prestige members, from whom AC generated $8K a year each, or $1.7 billion. Which means that all told, elites generate $3.7 billion annually for the airline. Put another way, these 300K most frequent fliers -- about 5% of all Aeroplan members -- represented one-half of all AC's Y2K passenger revenues!

Something to think about.