Originally Posted by pitz

I expect that if people are going to be rewarded for 'loyalty', that it not be done at the expense of revenue passengers. The original intent of Aeroplan was never to create a two-tier experience at the airports itself, but rather, to make seats available, "for free", that had almost no statistical chance of being sold as revenue seats, to frequent customers.

So basically, if I was in charge at AC, I would remove the free MLL access for status passengers. I would remove any preferential treatment on-board the airplanes, including the free preferred seat selection and priority boarding. And do away with the special line-ups and security screenings in the airports that have them. No complimentary upgrade preference either.

Rewarding loyalty is one thing, but its not something that should come at the expense, whether real or perceived, of people who are bringing the airline money today -- obviously, bar none, the most important customers of all.

In exchange for this, I look for stability of reward redemption levels (ie: no creeping devaluation as we have seen over the years!), and minimal probability-of-sale seats actually being released to reward inventory relatively close to flight time.