ffay005

Niksal makes a very good point here. I think there's zero chance that AY will discontinue the qualify-by-segment possibility. Most segment qualifiers probably fly between HEL and either ARN or OUL. They buy expensive tickets at the last minute, they require flexibility and they do have a choice of airlines. On such a short flight, it doesn't really matter what colour the exterior is painted in, inside the plane it's more or less the same, be it AY, SK or DY. So to keep these pax with AY, it pays off to give them status if that is what makes them stay with AY and keep buying those expensive tickets.

And when you give status to pax who only (mostly) fly these short routes, the cost of that status is not very expensive to the airline. Nobody pays for a seat assignment on a 40 minute flight, so the cost of assigning exit rows to segment-qualifiers is €0. Not many check in bags, so there's no cost in throwing some theoretical extra free bags at status members here. The lounge obviously costs something, but I bet a substantial part of these frequent pax don't visit the lounge very time (and at OUL there is no lounge at all). The vouchers that Niksal uses to upgrade that one leisure flight a year obviously have a value. But that's about it.

It might very well be that the segment qualifiers are the most valuable customers to AY. That German executive who flies to Asia on corporate J tickets a few times a year probably doesn't bring in as much money as Niksal does.