Originally Posted by
MSPeconomist
Maybe AS only wants as FFers those customers who do live within its network. A lot of people have been abusing the credit card churn to AS miles to premium cabin award tickets strategies promoted by some of the bloggers.
You may be right, but the FF program used to coax a lot of people aboard AS planes who otherwise might never try them, simply because of the rich earn / redeem options. A narrower, meaner, less flexible program with no domestic partners does not make many new friends.
Originally Posted by
LoungeLizardHugo
I'd love to see AS bought out and folded into one of the existing big 3. Always been a weird odd-duck of an airline and in spite of being 75k I have grown to want to fly them less and less.
Five years ago I would have disagreed with you, vehemently. AS was a service / customer experience outlier with a high-utility FF program that functioned as a one-of-a-kind Switzerland-style currency exchange. Today, although I think the most propitious merger would actually be with B6 to create a #4 major, I think what you suggest would be OK. AS is now a niche proposition with a service / customer experience proposition no better than anyone else's, under siege in every stronghold with no real idea how to respond, while the FF program gets you to fewer and fewer destinations at ever-greater cost.