Originally Posted by ZenFlyer

I've only been following AAdvantage devlopments closely for the past two years -- by complete coincidence, beginning around the time that the new LP earning program was rolled out. It has been amazing to see the extent to which the marketing department appears to have the lead on determining new policies, without vetting from folks on the operations side, or people who understand in any detail how frequent flier programs work. Clearly this year the new goals are to drive all passengers to register for AAdvantage and all bookings to be done done directly via AA.com -- which are completely appropriate goals for a corporation, but no one seems to think through the implementation in advance. They instead make an announcement, wait to see what kind of problems are brought to their attention, and then later adjust their policy accordingly.