Originally Posted by raldat

After years of lurking and no posting I really thought I should step up and contribute. Having been at this flying game for many years now I cringe when I hear of frequent flyer program enhancements because generally what they mean is providing less for the customer to enhance the profitability of the program. As a gold flyer I am still awaiting the sting in the tail of the introduction of Diamond, i.e. what is taken away from gold to give to diamond and I think we are about to see it. The other thing I expect is the move to revenue based status accrual rather than mileage based. As someone whose company forces low fare economy on the ridiculous level of long haul flights I take each year I hope and pray that won’t occur.

But the purpose of this post… In the hope that someone from SAS is reading, here is what I want from a loyality program. I don’t want new ways to buy stuff, I don’t want gift shops and little presents. What I would like is the things that actually matter to travelers. I want:
• Upgrades when there are seats available for the highest level of frequent flyer (diamond) not just on the few occasions that it suits the airline (the rare op up).
• Upgrade vouchers for gold levels to allow them to access upgrades in the same way as above, i.e. whenever there is a seat avaiallbe
• Better access to paid (points) upgrades whenever there are seats available
• Access to the best economy seats. Why do I so often see non status flyers in the exit and bulkhead rows and why are these blocked when I try to access them
• Care taken when reallocating seats due to aircraft changes. On a recent flight to the US and return the dreaded LAN A340 was swapped onto and off my flight in both directions. In each case I lost my “better” seat to be shunted into a poor seat. Why?
• The good old soft block. Block that seat next to me and make it the last one filled. Give me (and the other high level flyers) the best chance possible of a free seat next to them.
• Make sure that if anything else goes wrong, I am looked after before others.

The above is what really matters to me. That is what makes me loyal. The rest is just irrelevant fluff. It takes me a lot of work in my work travel system to stay with SAS to build up enough points to be gold. It is not that far away from not being worth the trouble. Please please don’t downgrade any more.