Originally Posted by
Adam Smith
Are you suggesting AC would do this or *A would do this? I doubt any airline wants the extra complexity of administering separate tiers like that.
AC and/or other airlines offering this could do this, if they didn't want to provide all their home airline benefits. I agree it's complex, but I don't see why they couldn't do this if they really wanted to. They could also just not provide certain things like base eUpgrade credits for status given this way.
They may also be getting a cut of fees and interest revenue - it's not like making margin on the sale of points is *A's only source of revenue from the card. To some extent, this is also an FX issue. 1 AUD = 0.90 CAD or 0.67 USD at current exchange rates, roughly. If AC or UA usually sells points for, say, 1 cent in their local currency, selling them to *A/HSBC for 1 cent in AUD is a huge discount.
I still think *A wants to realise revenue from 'points'. AU market interchange rates are also much lower so that could explain a bit as well. I also do wonder the correlation of people who pay for 'high' annual fee cards that end up carrying a balance and paying interest, though.