Long time FT'er (2003) but have been away for a bit due to being busy adulting. Just caught wind of this fiasco last night and did some back-tracking.

So bloggers have been posting about using AS miles on EK since at least Dec. 2013 but they are to blame for what AS did to themselves by offering a 40% bonus (which was even higher back in November 2015) for miles purchased between mid-February and 2 days ago, thus lowering CPM to 2.11¢/mile??

While I understand the anger over the 'riff-raff' all "discovering" this gaming-the-system opportunity, I don't think it's completely fair to blame the bloggers who have been putting out that information for quite a while now.

Looks to me like it was the latest promo that was the straw that broke the EK F camel's back. Plenty of blame game to go around for everyone

The interesting thing to me was how the 40% bonus ended on March 31st. If they hadn't "devalued" the redemption on EK, wouldn't the AS award bookings have naturally atrophied due to the CPM going back up again?