Originally Posted by
skyhighlander
There are some downsides, it will be slightly more difficult to keep, or rather - to achieve status, but come on, considering what majority of people were expecting just last weekend, it's nothing!
It's only more difficult if you were qualifying on segments based on solely short-haul (EU or domestic) flights, or on miles in Y with full fare tickets. As soon as you also do long-haul it is either the same (owing to the slightly increased requirements) or easier (if you fly premium long-haul).
Example of how many EU flights you need to get to Silver (just to keep it easy), which today requires 15 segments:
Using EU short-haul only: 20
Using EU short-haul with 4 long-haul segments in Y at 10XP each: 12 (roughly the same as today at 16 segments total)
Using EU short-haul with 2 long-haul segments in J at 30XP each: 8
Using EU short-haul with 2 long-haul segments in F at 50XP each: 0
(I picked the middle long-haul number, Long 2, as an average.)
In each of those cases, you would still need 15 flights under the current system so it only becomes more difficult in the no-long-haul-at-all situation. Which makes commercial sense for AFKL.
The situation where you really get shafted with this new system is if you were qualifying on miles using full-fare (or close to full fare) tickets. There is no longer an allowance for that in terms of status earning, so full-fare tickets now only generate more award miles. But, if you were buying full fare for the level miles, you can now stop doing that and buy regular tickets instead which saves you a lot of money.