Exactly!

The Alliance has to keep *Gold special. If the Alliance allows just 35,000 miles in some plans to achieve *Gold, then it downgrades the worth of *Gold and leads to what Singapore Airlines is doing. I.e. treating *Gold as 3rd rate passengers.

I've earned nearly 200,000 status miles so far, with over 2 months to go in my calendar year. And I can't get higher * status. I could join several *FF plans, I suppose but why should I have to do this? The Alliance should have reasonable consistency across its members. They do not have to be identical but they should not be too far apart either. And they ARE getting too far apart now. And *Gold will start to be a joke.

I predict a shake-up of the whole thing in the not too distant future that will balance things out.


[This message has been edited by Austman (edited 04-20-2000).]