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Over the past few years I feel like we've seen a huge devaluation of *G status all across the board, from "Light" fares with no extra baggage for *G starting from NZ and now spread to all LH group, SK, and TP, C class lounges not open to *G (like UA Polaris, SQ SKL, ET Cloud Nine) or without guesting privileges (NZ Regional lounges), lots of spinoff carriers like Eurowings, Air Seoul, Thai Smile, Silkair, Uni Air, Edelweiss etc. in which avoiding *A seems like a prime reason they are created, in addition to rumblings that TP wasn't giving extra bag to *G on any fares (after complaining about a baggage related issue to TP customer care, they told me non-TP *G gets an extra bag only when the itinerary contains 2 or more *A airlines, however it seems they implemented this in practice to only discount fares and not all fares) and UA's new China baggage promo (they claim that the "normal" allowance is 1 bag, but due to a special promo with no end date pax with no status get 2 bags, as do *G because "normal" allowance is 1 bag). I got a lot of flak for complaining about this in the UA forum but this one still doesn't sit right with me. If they can claim that all China pax get 2 bags because of a special promo and the normal allowance is 1 bag so *G should also only get 2 bags, what's stopping them from saying that Europe pax get 1 bag due to special promo, normal allowance is 0, and *G should only get 1?

How much farther can they go? Is there something in the *A contract that prevents continued spread of these kinds of behaviors further? Could the European airlines' standard bag-inclusive fares be rebranded as "Light Plus" so they too can avoid giving an extra bag to *G? Are they planning to just cancel the *G baggage benefit?

Why isn't SkyTeam having this problem? I'm not aware of any fare on any SkyTeam airline that gives STE+ no extra bags, Joon, AF's spinoff, is basically full service AF as far as STE+ benefits are concerned, and they don't have anything like the magnitude of exceptions that *A has.