Originally Posted by
San Gottardo
In fact, over the years, I had the impression that there was consensus among posters here that there was virtually no difference between Gold and Platinum, and that Platinum did not have sufficient benefits. So much so that the FT delegations that exchange with AF regularly brought this up in conversations with the airline and asked what additional benefits for Plat could be to position it more distinctively from Gold. From the ovbservation that the two are very similar it is only a very small step to simply reposition the levels: merge the two that have virtually no difference (Gold and Plat), and create a new one.
But there is a much simpler answer to this problem or few differences between gold and plat : give more benefits to plat !!!! And I believe that's always what we have said to AF/FB (during CDG DO or in other meetings). No need to change LTPE to LTGE and no need for a further tier, especially when you see that they already have troubles to make enough distinction between them.
Also, another comment : it was said many times in this thread that it is easy or even very easy to reach gold or plat. It might be "not too hard" indeed to qualify by segments but overall we have to remember that we are all on this forum completely biased. Most of us are aviation geeks and know many things about FFP, airlines ops etc but we are a microscopic number of people and 99% of people do not make mileage runs or force connections via CDG or AMS to have more segments. So for the immense majority of pax, it is very hard to reach a status in a FFP, and incredibly hard to be LTPE after 10 years in a row. We should not forget this IMO.