Dorian and Jet,

Do not see how the elite levels can be matched up when we have very different airlines servicing very different routes in terms of geography and scale.

Take for instance in NZ, the longest domestic flight you can take is around 800km! (AKL/ZQN - not exactly a regular route). Therefore for elites of NZ's program to make say 100k miles to be equivalent with UA or other top elite levels would entail either an insane amount of domestic travel or alot of overseas travel (luckily NZ is miles from anywhere ). Also you need to look at country factors in NZ flying often for business and regular short visits overseas (to Australia for instance) as still considered unusual compared with perceptions elsewhere (may be a "south island thing").

Other factor is to take into account cost of tickets and how that effects flying patterns. NZ is one of the most expensive per mile country I have seen. Makes Australia look cheap.

What the airlines have done is factor in a % of their pax that they want at each elite level and taylored their system to that. So that there are essentially the same % of elite pax, and of course there are going to be "hordes" of UA elites because they have a massive program. As long as each keeps to its percentages in line then it is relatively "fair". Also it is not like silvers get a huge amount of benefits in reality (no lounge access, no "priority baggage", etc etc).

I am sure that these factors also affect what occurs overseas and why there are differences between programmes.

Mark