Originally Posted by
ft101
But customers in DXB are only a small percent of the total pax or revenue. Surely it makes more sense to keep the majority happy.
Originally Posted by
abhilife2001
+1 ..It would be interesting to see the % of transit pax which fill up EK flights, but I guess it will be anything from 75-80% ( if not more) ..
EK pricing ex dxb fares as expensive compared to xxx-dxb-xxx is something it has decided to do based on evaluation of competition etc etc.. Its a pricing decision it is taking BUT this cannot be linked to the miles earned.
Miles are earned in 99% of the airlines by miles flown based on fare classes and the sum of two sectors is usually not lower than the break up of the two (unless fixed miles are used for some regions, like within EU or domestic EU).
The percieved advantage is very small ( say 10% of the miles) and I don"t believe that pax think of that as an advantage and neither did EK ..
So if I was doing this and wanted to give DXB based customers and edge, I'd just give them a 10% tier miles bonus.
EK has chosen to do this the other way round. Of course, it is frustrating because they reduced earnings for everything except intra Gulf flights (DXB - JFK is 6000 miles when it's actually 6800 flown miles) and often it is inconsistent (DXB - SIN is 7000 miles and 32,500 for flex upgrade while SIN - MEL is 7500 miles and 30,000 for flex upgrade).
So yea I don't know on what basis they decided on the numbers (well they've tried to ensure you just miss qualifying for a tier), and while they may have been trying to simplify things with the whole zone system they have only complicated it more.
Having said that, airlines like QR, BA do award zone based tier points and maybe EK wanted to do the same thing without complicating it with tier points and miles. I really don't know.