Originally Posted by
San Gottardo
I see what you mean and I agree.
But what I was thinking of were benefits that we often expressed as a wish list, such as "use of the Salon Premiere for Platinums". With >20,000 Platinums that is not possible. Lufthansa was struggling with 5,000, so AFKL would certainly struggle with 20,000.
The kind of services offered by HSBC or Amex are definitely higher than the norm but not super-exclusive. To me HSBC or Amex should be role models for Flying Blue Gold card holders, but Platinum should be more exclusive and have some more benefits.
Which shows that Platinum is an easy-to-achieve fourth tier but in return doesn't offer a lot. Different from HON Circle for instance, which requires a serious amount of flying.
I would concur with San Gottardo, only way is to make another level over Plat to thin the wheat from the chaff and get manageable numbers to offer HON type services. It's not gonna happen hence my ditching for this year over to EK to get Plat there. I already qualified for AF Plat for 2014, so thats the last they will see of me for a while. Got a nice call back from FB rep in French we dicked around over an hour and I spewed all the faults with the programs, too easy for golds to qualify, plat is too easy to obtain ergo beaucoup E+ everywhere you look on a plane.... :-) Lounges are swamped in CDG and most outstaions are too small for the amount of elites etc etc. and they stated that yes we are looking to implement new methodolgy to bring down the numbers of Elites, and we want to keep your valued flying (works out about 65k USD a year all business) yada yada yada