Originally Posted by
QRC3288
For example: CX has, whether by accident or design, finally stumbled upon the fact that it's clever to hold back award inventory for its own program and even give special inventory to GOs and DMs, instead of dumping award inventory to American Airlines and Alaska. Guess what? You see the mileage bloggers now dutifully flogging the benefits of MPC whereas before it was deemed a mostly worthless program for those types. There is something of a zero sum game between airlines and their mileage programs - "better"/larger programs tend to earn at the expense of those like MPC. Yet CX has a product that is aspirational for many fliers native to other programs and thus there is (has been for a long time) untapped bargaining power that CX has been either too inept or unwilling to fully tap into. Now, those changes seem to be slowly happening. One such benefit to dangle, could be lifetime OWE.
...This can also, of course be quantified so it's just a math problem, not some bogeyman that is all mysterious and frightening. Maybe the math could even work out! (Or maybe not). I will add, with some amusement that I'm not sure who the typical DM is, but I don't see myself suddenly quitting my 16 years of spending on CX mostly in premium cabins, to switch it up to fly Y so I can mooch off my lifetime OWE benefits, were I to get such a thing!
I never saw the benefit to CX of letting grAAber/grASper churners such wide access to low-reimbursement partner seats.
Then again I'm not running CX or any airline's revenue department. Maybe they see something we don't.
Still, it'll be getting to the level of We must do something. This is something. Therefore, we must do this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politician%27s_syllogism in order for CX to reinstate lifetime DMs.
Originally Posted by
QRC3288
The year by year thing is indeed challenging. It does just feel a little weird if you got booted out after a light year in say 20-25 years as a DM. After all, many of us in this forum are far more "CX" than current executives at CX themselves! I see people upthread talking about 18, 19 year consecutive Diamonds. How many travelers are there like that out there?
The existence of decades-long DMs like yourself shows there is no need to do anything more.
Probably CX may want to consider giving lifetime status to some passengers, whose travel is not overly constricted by managed corporate travel, not based in HK and who may have an abundance of options to choose from e.g. Kangaroo route or SEA-US. But how do you reward these "worthy" pax without also rewarding home hub captives, who are just going to spend no matter what?
Also, unlike say Japan duopoly, UK (when BMI was still around to challenge BA) or US Big 3, there's not as strong an ecosystem of home customers that you have to dangle a nebuchadnezzar-sized carrot in order to lock up. At most CX can imitate QF (and more recently MH at 4MM), where you might get lifetime benefits after spending your life getting there (as
djsflynn said).