Thanks for listening to us Andrew. I am glad that this has remained civil and no one is attacking you personally unfortunately I am going to be taking a reexamination of my travel options next year and AC will probably be that option far less (actually, it is becoming less civil in the last few pages which is unfortunate).

This year I have upgraded the following flights on AC:
YOW-HNL-YOW Lat SWU (Leftover 2009 certs) 4 e-upgrades
YOW-LAS-YOW FP SWU (Leftover 2009 certs) 20 e-upgrades
YOW-CUN-YOW FP NAU 20 e-upgrades
YOW-LHR-YOW T+ SSWU 28 e-upgrades
YOW-LAS-YOW FP NAU 20 e-upgrades
HNL-YOW Lat SWU 2 e-upgrades

I also have 7 upcoming flights and 6 SWUs to use on them. Even as a lowly E I would rate the chances of them clearing pretty high.
YOW-EWR T+ 6 e-upgrades
YOW-IAH T+ 10 e-upgrades (1,503 miles, bad luck on this one)
SFO-LHR-SFO Lat already upgraded 16 e-upgrades
YOW-CUN-YOW FP 20 e-upgrades
YOW-TPA (not booked yet, prob on FP but might go to another carrier) 6 e-upgrades

I've received 2 SSWU, 10 SWU, 4 NAU throughout the year (I think that is all of them anyway). Thanks largely to buying two Florida Plus flight passes I will probably use up all of those certs and did use up all of my 2009 certs.

Now looking at the new program these same upgrades come to 152 e-upgrades. As an E who selected the 50% bonus this year I will only start with 25 e-upgrades. With threshold levels and flight pass activity I will be up to just over 50 e-upgrade credits based on my flying this year.

Even if the U fare class was moved to the same level as M that would only bring down my e-upgrade total to about 100 e-upgrades being needed. If they do a summer/Christmas reduction on points required that would bring it down another 10 or 20 but it will still leave me in the back of the bus a lot more often than this year.

After writing this out I am going to have to seriously reconsider my flying habits. Thanks to AC's thinking that the StarMegaDo is a waste of their time I was able to qualify as a Silver on CO ($4k of revenue that AC saw none of). Since I am a leisure flyer I fly mainly to destinations where my UDUs would actually clear. I am also able to move my flights around to improve my upgrade chances. CO also gives 150% EQM for B fares so I would have earned status more quickly flying them than AC.

Initially I didn't think that this was as bad as everyone was saying but after looking at my flying patterns I now realize that I need to look at other options. While I do prefer the domestic business class provided by AC over its US counterparts I won't be seeing it much with these new changes.

I do admit that I was making nearly optimal use of my certs I am saddened that I will have to ride in steerage far more often than I did this year if I choose to stay with AC. My revenue flying will be lower than this year because of a nice award I've booked in F but I will still need to get out of fun filled Ottawa a few more times this year. I have enough for another F award in 2012 but by then they will probably remove that option so I don't think that that carrot will be enough to keep me with AC.

I guess I am the kind of bottom feeder that you are trying to get rid of though so mission accomplished AC.

(please pardon any errors with the math but it should be pretty close)