Originally Posted by GrayAnderson

I think this was also a matter of not biasing folks heavily towards crediting towards one program or another. Ignoring status, a lower-fare SFO-JFK TCON flight might run $850 plus fees in F (for 4250 Elevate points) while a similar flight on Alaska in F would get you roughly 4500 miles on Alaska.

At a conversion rate of 1.3:1 there's an advantage to using Elevate (you get 5525 miles) but at 2:1 you'd actually get to a point that an Alaska elite might well do better on VX than on crediting "internally", leading to complaints and/or distortions. Move the fare up to $1000 (5000 Elevate points) for the same flight and I can already hear the crowing from an MVP member that they'd get more points as a newbie over on VX for the same flight, to say nothing of a VX Gold now taking them to the cleaners in terms of post-conversion points piles...for a Gold Elevate account a $1000 F fare TCON on VX would, in that case, rack up 22,000 redeemable miles:
((1000*5)*2.2)*2=(5000*2.2)*2=11000*2=22000
For an MVP 75K member, they'd earn:
(2600*1.75)*2.25=4550*2.25=approx. 10200

Going with 1.3 keeps that differential to 14300 vs 10200, which while substantial isn't a total massacre. Granted, on some of the higher fares ($1500+) the damage is still substantial, IIRC those are also well above AS' refundable fares.