Originally Posted by
hoipolloi
Who is a "real SE" and is annoyed there will be a bunch of lowly 75K becoming SEs on the cheap to compete on the limited resources available that benefit SEs ?
I would suggest that there are not that many. I have been an SE for a while and am going to qualify in 2022 based on flying. To me, the advantage of all of these promos is the ability to get above 250K total miles over 2 years, which, if the threshold gifts apply, will allow be to bank a year of SE status, something I have never done. I suspect, like many posters have said, that there will be a reasonable number of SE's who don't qualify for 2023 as they won't have done enough flying.
AC is doing some creative things to get people flying. Having their loyalty program members fly a bit extra (like me) to hit certain thresholds is going to be good for their bottom line, I reckon. They are looking to give the flying public as many reasons to get back out travelling as possible. My experience lately has been people are coming back as, anecdotally, planes and airports are getting busy again. Flair and Porter are trying to increase competition, so AC doing things like this to keep people in the AC fold, is a very proactive way to both encourage flying and keep people flying AC. It's also been fun - look how many posts there are in this exact thread after an announcement yesterday morning.
I say good on AC.