Originally Posted by
Nick9251
But once again, instead of adding perks to the upper tiers, it's easier to remove some to the lower ones, right?
I fully agree, and that's what I said above.
But the thing is, with certain perks, you can't "add". When boarding a plane, there is only one or two jetways and only one or two doors. If many people use the priority boarding the jetway still becomes clogged and you still have a "traffic jam" in the aisle and headracks will still be very full, even if you're an Elite customer.
For the perk to be a real benefit it must see Elite+ pax get on board faster and have space for their hand luggage before others. Two options: have more jetways or aircraft doors - not realistic. Or just put less people in the priority boarding group. That's what they did.
So in this case I find the "taking away" justified. Same for priority luggage delivery. There are only so many luggage belts and delivery vans, etc.
It's a different story for ticket counters. If they find that the wait is too long for Elite+, just add some counters! There is no bottleneck/scarce infrastructure. At least in theory.