Originally Posted by
Banko
Sorry for bringing a bit of rain to the party... but:
In June/July 2009 SAS introduced the fee.
In Oct/Nov 2009 SAS removed the fee again (most likely due to people being very annoyed with this very dramatic change).
In 2010 they win an award for this!?!?
Excuse me, but I find that insane.. if Flying Blue on 1st of May introduced a 200 euro fee for calling their support center, and then removed the fee on 10th of May, would they then win the price??
For the record, I'm the president of the FT Awards, but there's a nomination committee that makes the decision on who wins the Loyalty Leadership awards.
Around that time, most European airlines had introduced huge fuel surcharges making redemption a joke. SAS listened to their frequent travelers and removed it, no other airline did. The nomination committee came to the conclusion that it was a gutsy move by SAS and they deserved to win.
I agree.
At the FT Awards about 1 million people voted for what the programs did in 2009. To fill the void of the previous awards was a lot of work and we were not able to do it in April, so of course, announcing something that happened in 2009 in late 2010 is not optimal, but it was our only option. Usually our predecessor had voting in February and March and gave out the awards in April for what happened the previous year.
That's exactly what we intend to do. The next years awards will be held in NYC on April 28th