Big corporations exists of many different cogs. The revenue department exists separately from loyalty programme, so even though team 1 says: hey, this might be a good idea from a revenue perspective which might be true, doesn’t mean team 2 is made aware of that algorithm ‘upgrade’; which might impact overall loyalty treatment goals. So even if it is official AK/KLM policy, I’d be interested in knowing FB’s perception of that policy and if they 1) are aware of it and 2) how this can be aligned with the goals of a loyalty programme: namely rewarding frequent flyers for their loyalty. Nothing can be more diametrically opposed to that admittedly broadly interpretable goal than penalizing status holders on a general service provided such as upgrade offers. I don’t think any of us is even asking at this point for preferential treatment, we’re just asking for a rational behind it and perhaps equal treatment. In theory, if you think about this properly you could even develop a system where you can reach both goals where you don’t penalise the status holders but still provide incentives to non-status holders to experience long haul business class. It just takes commitment to put someone on the case to think about it more than 1 step ahead: let’s give non-status holders a massive discount.