Originally Posted by
ryan182
Outside upgrades many of the other benefits are defined by OW also history shows us that the reduction of benefits is primarily driven by the actions of DL and to a lesser degree UA not the number of members. In short they will give a little as they feel they can based on what the competition provides and that will be the case if there are 10,000 or 10,000,000 EXPs. When EQDs were introduced I would assume that had an effect on the number of people meeting all thresholds, unless I missed something we didn't get any additional benefits and in fact the number of SWUs were cut in half.
Huh? This makes little sense. AA's internal evaluation of the cost/benefit to the airline of the elite program is surely defined by many factors: including OW alliance terms; what the competition does, how many members AA has at the various elite levels, and a whole host of other things. "DL did it" makes a nice FT-soundbite - but its not as universally true as people think it is.
And many benefits of the program have nothing to do with OW: MCE is one, award redeposit fees and other fees waivers is another, the (largely useless) same-day change policy is yet another, etc...
And you're glossing over the fact that this very program change announcement contains additional benefits.