<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by beaubo:
well, the folks at Aeroplan must have torn a page out of this thread, because;
* they waited until the VERY last minute to announce sweeping (and uniformly negative) changes to their progam
I am sympatheic to the airlines collective plight and begrudgingly accept that some retrenchment might be necessary.
But, why couldn't AC have ANNOUNCED their plans now, but delayed IMPLEMENTATION until mid-year....to give everyone some breathing room to adjust to the changes and to allow some type of advance planning for AP members to decide on a rational exit strategy (liquidate miles).
If AP gets away this sudden bombshell without a whimper from its membership or from the FFP vanguard (that's you Randy!), then I'm fearful that AC's precedent will be brazenly repeated by the US majors.
To reiterate, my consistent issue is NOT hamstringing the airlines in their ability to make changes, but rather to make those changes effective after a reasonable (6 mo.) grace period after the announcement of changes.</font>
What announcement are you referring to? All that we've been told has come from idividual agents and NOT Air Canada or Aeroplan. I think when airlines say things like this in advertising they imply something in such a statement:
"And remember that the more you fly, the closer you’ll be to Aeroplan Prestige®, Aeroplan Elite® or Aeroplan Super Elite® status—along with the exclusive benefits that go with each."
I think that its implicit that EARNED benefits will be the same or very similar to those currently in place. Surely AC could not simply decide that Prestige 2003 benefits were unlimited pretzels, Elite was pretzels and one bathroom pass and Super Elite was the foregoing but unlimited bathroom passes. This is NOT what AC thinks its customers are expecting - they know this very well.
Its just crazy the way airlines think they can just pull the rug out from under those who have spent the cash and flown the miles without any consequences.
The absolute worst thing is the utter and complete lack on communication from the company regarding these issues - heck they've yet to announce qualifying levels for 2002. I will refuse to spend a dime before they tell us what the terms are, preferably for 2002 and 2003.