It may not be the good old days, but it hardly feels bleak to me. The difference to me now is that you have to have a decent amount of organic travel, spend or both to make it work well. Gone are the days of signing up 20 times for the same credit card to get a first class redemption, but I struggle to accept that they ever weee or should have been the norm.

My my wife and I have managed to do almost every long haul trip in J or F over the last 24 months (over ten trips) off the back of award redemptions so I wouldn’t accept bleak.