Their answer to the question as to why they would prefer clients that spend less money, versus those that spend more on expensive tickets made no sense, and they did not actually answer it. Why they would want people spending more time flying while spending less money is baffling, and makes no economic (or environmental) sense. They also admitted at the very beginning of the call, that those customer flying the longest distances, on the most expensive tickets will be the ones most disadvantaged from these changes (i.e. first class to LA and Singapore). Perhaps the hope is that they can squeeze yet another flight out of us as we wouldn't want to lose the status over one flight. They may be very wrong though.....

I spoke to a senior manager in December, and he told me that the HON program was really not intended for first class flyers, but for business class travelers. In his words "if you fly first you already get all the benefits so why should we do anything extra for you? Our product is by far the best in the industry and hence you should be happy to be "allowed" to travel with us. What else do you want?". He then went on to tell me that the new first will be the best in the world and a replacement for private jet travel (I asked if he ever tried SQ suites and what do think of the funny middle seat, and he went a bit quiet..) and when I asked about pricing he looked up, rolled his eyes back and said "very expensive. Very, very expensive and very exclusive which is how it should be". He seemed very pleased with himself....

I think it is also clear that they want to lower the amount of HON members rather than invest more in the program. They kept mentioning wanting to get back to 2019 levels on the call. I am sure that these levels were lower than today.

I also asked about life time HON after let's say 20 or 30 years of being a HON and the answer was a resounding: Never! They do not care about very long term loyalty and they think "philosophically", as he put it, they shouldn't care about that at all. all they want is immediate revenue.

I wish them luck though I think they live on a different planet ......