The smart and sleazy way to communicate...

Test the market’s reaction and see what you can get away with, access the potential churn of customers to other FF programs or competing airline alliances before you finalize how hard you’ll bring the devaluation hammer down.

Let the penny drop slowly and split the negative reactions over two press cycles to dilute it out. Make it more palatable than a sudden halving of the worth of something held by your customers.

I’d anticipate an positive ‘fluffy’ announcement about new routes or improved first class, centenary celebrations around this news, sandwiching good around bad news to further dilute out the negative PR effect.