Originally Posted by
cauchy
But the flip-side is that you can now purchase most of the benefits of status. In fact this might actually save you money, as the underlying plane ticket can be booked on a time and price basis.
Want priority boarding - any LCC will sell it to you. Or get EasyJet plus. Virgin does "economy Delight" which gives priority too. And get lounge access off your credit card.
This is so true. I am glad that airlines de-bundled their offering so one can choose the bits they actually need. Airports also started offering fast track immigration and security for purchase which I always use. I am not tied to BA on shorthaul so cannot use the status, but almost all airlines I use offer everything that one would normally get either with the class of service or via status for purchase. The only thing that they don't offer is priority check-in unfortunately. I just bought a trip to London for 2 with UIA paying for an extra comfort seat, bags, hot meals, seats at the front of the cabin (so basically a business class experience), which ended costing good 40% less than what I used to pay for economy a few years ago, and three times cheaper than buying business class now. It's nice to have status but the world does not end when we loose it. Lounges at non-home airports are horribly sad so I'd rather sit at a bar. I lost a Premium status with PS last year, and honestly did not really notice a difference apart from losing the business class check-in benefit.