Originally Posted by
Adam Smith
I don't doubt you'll be back to travelling as soon as things open up. But I think that with various quarantines, border restrictions, etc, it could be a very gradual opening. So maybe you'll be able to do a trip to Canada in June or July, but I suspect there will be a lot fewer opportunities to, say, fly LH F to Europe for a few days in August or September.
So I don't doubt you'll be burning some points, but could your burn rate be down by 50% or more for a while, potentially?
Certainly possible.
Originally Posted by
Adam Smith
Not an unreasonable way of looking at it. I would just add that, while a massive devaluation is somewhat unlikely, the talk seems to be more and more around dynamic pricing, and a devaluation could be really awful from that perspective. Have you ever tried to redeem SkyMiles? It's a joke. So you might be in a situation where you're having to find rewards only with partner space in order to benefit from a devalued partner award chart (e.g. 150K points to Europe in J, maybe?), but without the ability to enjoy IKK or YQ waiver on any segments, or pay some stupid price (250K points on AC metal to Europe in J?) to enjoy IKK and YQ waiver.
The vast majority of my intercontinental redemptions do not have AC metal, so that's really no change.
Within North America, I've been slowly moving from Aeroplan to FPs. I do not foresee any further SFO-YYZ/YOW/YUL redemptions. So even there, a complete elimination of fixed mileage and IKK wouldn't have as big an impact on me as it might on someone who lives in Canada and basically has to either connect or fly AC.
That being said, I think it's highly unlikely IKK would disappear. And dynamic pricing on all redemptions is the equivalent of IKK disappearing. SE IKK is defined as requiring the same number of miles as a fixed mileage redemption.
I seem to recall the only statement being made was that most NA redemptions would be dynamic, which means it's possible for some to not be dynamic. And I'd take that to mean IKK isn't going anywhere.