Originally Posted by
bse118
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 yet for the past couple years they have followed their competitors (primarily DL) religiously. Yes I'm sure they have a cost/benefit internally but that was my point, competitive pressures will outweigh those internal costs but when they get the opportunity (aka DL/UA does it first) AA will happily follow suit. To be clear, this isn't necessarily a complaint; minimizing costs in response to changes in the competitive landscape is a logical thing to do. I'm just not naive enough to think that this, or any other change, is going to be to my benefit. When the next economic downturn occurs and the airlines are hurting we will be courted again, until then they will give as little as possible.
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...
MCE...kinda like...C+ oh and the inclusion of free drinks/food for MCE which AA
was a pioneer in re... followed DL in adding. I predict that AA maintains these not because they want to but because they feel they need to, if other airlines did not provide these benefits do you really think AA would do so? That bridge BTW, did I mention its very lightly used?
And you're glossing over the fact that this very program change announcement contains additional benefits.
What additional benefits? If you're referring to the 150/200/250K EQM thresholds...that's something many EXPs will not see and I pity those that do. Plus now if you fly 200K EQMs you get the same number of SWUs you had before EQDs...quite the additional benefit there!!