Presumably the basis for AC's decisions regarding the Altitude program were based on their data analytics.
I question the quality of their interpretation of the data. Last week, I received an email from AC encouraging me to buy a Rapidair Flight Pass:
You’ve flown Air Canada’s Rapidair® flights between Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa 32 times already in the past year.
Did you know that Air Canada offers a Flight Pass designed to suit the needs of travellers like you? The Rapidair Flight Pass is a package of one-way flight credits* for single or multiple passengers for travel between Toronto, Montreal and Ottawa.
The reality is that
not once has my destination been YUL or YYZ (I'm based in YOW). Further, every single one of my connecting flights has been to another AC flight. Surely they should know this. And thus the Rapidair Flight Pass is of no value to me. In fact, I have bought two Latitude Europe Flight Passes this year, which AC also knows, and many of the connecting flights have been for them.
If this is the quality of the analytics they are using, then no wonder the decision making is suspect. Making decisions on bad data is worse that making decisions on no data at all!
p.s. I am on track to have 38 short haul YOW-YYZ or YOW-YUL segments this year, but I am not totally upset by the loss of the 500 mile minimum. Sure, it is annoying, but it will end up only costing me about 10,000 miles and won't affect my status - for others, I am sure it is important. What is aggravating is the poor selection of direct flights from YOW, including the loss of YOW-FRA. The 500 mile minimum partially made up for the irritation of adding 2-4 hours extra on each trip to connect through YUL or YYZ.