Surely this is madness, Thai Air are struggling and now the board decide to alienate their best customers. Many people such as myself do not shop around with other airlines because of the award availability and why would I now pay about £790 for an economy flight LHR to HKT when I can pay £630 and still get 25% of the miles?
This change is also underhand, I have made buying decisions based on the awards promised and now this promise has been halved.
From August as an ROP Gold member I will earn 25% more miles in economy and 50% more miles in business, but it will cost me an extra 100% when I come to use them. Also the miles earned before the awards are halved will not be retrospectively increased, this is also underhand. However I look at this I feel I have been conned.
When I now calculate the returns that can be realised for this extra £160 it does not appear worth it. e.g. I will now need 23 LHR to HKT economy return flights for a first class return that still costs some £450 in “taxes”. 23 x £160 = £3,680 and the benefit is £3,750. Not only that but one also now has to make these 23 flights within a 3 year period.
Now that ROP no longer makes sense for me this will mean that when I fly business at peak periods I will now have no incentive to use Thai. The only incentive now is to retain my Gold status which I can do on a quarter of the flights I buy.