Originally Posted by
Concerto
Well I really am like you (no LH Group since beginning of March 2020) and moving more over to SkyTeam. But there, I am with Air France KLM, not OK (CSA Czech Airlines, right?) I hope CSA don't disappear, because with the AirEuropa takeover and the probable transformation of Alitalia into something else, SkyTeam is beginning to look a lot less interesting in Europe. Whereas LH Group is widespread with a lot of hubs.
About elite status extensions, AFKL offered an extension both last year and this year, along with the double XPs promotion. For me, personally anyway, they have handled the whole thing better than LH Group.
Yes, Czech Airlines. The service delivery has been hit and miss in the last years - with more and more flights outsourced to wetlease QS 737s, and inability to purchase any ancillaries on c/s tickets - but they BoB in Y is decent, QS crew is decent, OK crew is outright great and their intra-Europe C is (was) the best around.... Still the main thing for me is - they've been the sole presence of Skyteam in my local airport, and now they are gone after 90+ (!!) years for the first time except during the war.
Leaves me with OS (currently 4x weekly), LO maybe starting mid-September baring any further delays, and potentially EW who still seem to plan to re-start service from DUS in winter schedule.
UX I won't miss too much - other than going to Spain, they never seemed that interesting, and Spain is a well served market, but I am looking at AZ situation with a slight worry.
Absolutely. Even if we remain in the *A universe, other programs have been more straightforward. They gave straight-up status extensions and then ran promos granting extra EQM (or EQS...).
With M&M, you need to be a major nerd to follow along. Some colleagues of mine use M&M as their sole or, at least, primary program. They ask me what they need to do! What M&M has done is full of special rules. One rule applies to elites with expiry 02/21 but not to elites with expiry 02/22. One rule is for SEN and FTL but not HON. Another is just for HON. One rule applies to status miles (EQM), but not to select miles, HON miles, or RDM. Another applies to EQM and HON miles but not to the other categories. For another promo you need the right CC *and* elite status. Such a convoluted mess.
EDIT: I don't think it's a problem per se that a program has all the bells and whistles such as a 3-region award for the nerds. However, it's not good if you almost need a degree to understand the difference between status miles and status star points, flight segments, HON circle miles and select miles.
Plus promotions where you need like several nested if-then-else statements to describe how it affects different mileage categories.
Quite. Under normal circumstances it's not too bad, but now... anyway the answer for me seems to be simple.... wait and see and maybe requal next year from scratch.