Originally Posted by
zorn
Are we 100% certain it's the credit card holders who are crowding the lounges, and not also a combination of the following issues
All have been discussed, and I think generally acknowledged as issues, in
the thread on how AC is creating too many elites.
Originally Posted by
zkzkz
There is the obvious logical issue with "credit cards" being the problem... Frequent fliers are frequently at the airport. If the credit card holders aren't frequent fliers then it's tough for them to add up to a lot of seats in the lounge since they aren't there.... frequently.
I've already done the math on this in some other thread. It doesn't take a large number of incremental customers to push lounges over capacity, and even if individual non-elite credit card holders don't fly very often, there are so many of them out there in the country that it only takes a small percentage of them to show up to the lounge on any given day to have a large impact.
The only problem with that is that AC has defined frequent fliers as people who fly frequently *and* pay a lot for their tickets. By excluding all the lower fares from significant status qualification currency there are frequent fliers who don't actually qualify for status.
You misunderstand the purpose of a frequent flyer program. It's not to shower benefits on people who fly often, it's to incentivize behaviour that's profitable to the airline. The people who buy the cheapest possible tickets, especially Basic, may generate little to no profit for AC, and have also demonstrated themselves to be incredibly price-sensitive. AC thus chooses not to reward this behaviour.