Oh my god... finally made it through everything. I found a few posts I wanted to specifically reply to...
Originally Posted by
Ben Lipsey
I'm sorry you feel that way, as I said you'll have to determine if your travel patterns still warrant travel on AC. But as to your point about the logic behind reducing e-Upgrades, your screenshot highlights it perfectly: we want paid J.
Originally Posted by
Ben Lipsey
No, that's my point - that is a Z ticket, so that's what we want. But you're asking why we would make it more difficult to upgrade Y tickets, so I think we're hoping to get more people paying for J (or Z).
But you're losing paid J because of these changes. People are buying paid J on other airlines because they're no longer getting anything for it on AC.
So far this year, I have been on 27 segments in AC J. 6 of them were eUps. I think I had fewer than 5 segments on flights with J cabins where I was not in J (a couple failed upgrades, and one X fare after March 1). So I don't really consider myself one of the eUpgraders here. This change actually doesn't affect me that much. It would impact my desire to participate in another EYW, but I'm not sure either I or AC actually care about that
.
Originally Posted by
cperciva
I'm inclined to agree here; I always thought it was strange for someone to get Air Canada frequent flyer status by virtue of flying frequently on other *A carriers and occasionally flying in Air Canada. Personally I wouldn't have particularly minded if they had gone as far as saying that non-AC flights don't earn AQM at all.
I think there's two separate issues here: People who legitimately take short fights; and people who take deliberately circuitous routings in order to accumulate 500 mile increments (e.g., CanadianCow's famous SFO-YVR-YOW-YUL-YYZ). Rather than eliminating the 500 mile minimum entirely, I think it would make far more sense to change it from 500 miles per *segment* to 500 miles per *fare* -- in other words, a $206 YVR-YYJ fare would earn 500 miles, but a YVR-YYJ-YYZ routing would earn effectively the same as a direct YVR-YYZ. Of course, it may be that Air Canada's IT systems wouldn't be able to handle such a change.
I actually think that most of the changes being made are sensible; the only thing which really annoys me is losing 75% of my upgrades... especially since I recently bought a Europe Y flight pass for the sole reason that I thought I would be able to upgrade those bookings.
1. I agree that it makes sense to require more than 10k AC metal miles to earn SE status. I think 50k might be on the high side, but I have no issues meeting that.
2. For the record, I have done SFO-YVR-YUL-YOW-YYZ
exactly once. What I don't understand is if they have a problem with it, why is it a published routing?
3. I actually didn't have many segments this year under 500 miles. Will that change hurt me? Yes, of course. YYZ-YOW and YYZ-YGK are some fairly common flights for me, and it may make it harder for me to reach 100k next year, but I'm always coming from SFO, which is the bulk of the miles I earn.
In fact, of all the changes, the elimination of 500 mile minimums and reduction of eUp nominees to only one person are the only changes that really impact me that much. I'm a huge fan of no YQ, but given the requirement of me being on the flight to send a friend somewhere far away in J, and the fact that I can't requalify if I use Aeroplan for all my flights, I'm not even sure I'll get much use out of it.
But I'm still shocked about all this. You know you've done something wrong when you have people wondering where to book their second hundred thousand AQM of paid J for the year (well, okay, I guess they're not "wondering" at this point).
For me, I don't think much will change (at least for now - I haven't booked any 2015 flights yet, but I've booked all my 2014 flights, or at least bought the FP), but I'm going to take a hard look at UA/US/AA/DL again.