Originally Posted by
dark_phoenix
I think you have it right. Isolating Level Points from Bonus Points means that status is now purely a function of how much you spend. I guess the reward for loyalty is to be reflected in the soft and hard product as well as in reward redemption. I think the booking classes are pretty well mapped.
As I have said in a bunch of different ways, Anko needs cash. Desperately. His Prviate Equity owners are spreadsheet driven and will demand that every dollar of EB programme spend yield a multiplier in return. EB cannot afford to be "generous" anymore. Expect Anko and friends to strip EB down to the maximun that you are willing to tolerate, and invest only the absolute minimum in the hard/soft product so as to meet the minimum of AFKLM (which some will see as an improvement). They will happily charge more as part of the ST JV without providing anything more if they can get away with it. And you can be sure they will try 🙃
Having been a part of a firm or two that was acquired by private equity owners, they all sing from the same song book. They don't get involved in companies where they can't strip it down or "unlock value" by finding a new way to exploit existing assets.
They're simply behaving as most of the other airlines these days.
I think you're probably correct in that the changes are underpinned by the DD process on the value of an EBS/G/D and thus moving the banding makes sense (and I am one of those who's impacted by the loss of the 25% bonus (in that there may be a year I don't qualify)). But the SK programme is quite complex in that it is quite easy to gain status through Amex/MC which I imagine is yielding quite a few low value customers to SK (depending on the price SK sells status points for).
Yes, it will probably push both me and my partner into higher booking classes, but when we discussed this last time at home (he goes back and forth to Brussels a fair bit so have just lost two daily flight options), we decided that going forward maybe it is better to just to buy C outright on Brussels Airlines, and would imagine in the cost of our travel pattern we will be no worse off; we largely fly C in Europe 3-6 times (but some of this may be Y) / year and 1-2 LH C (but try to do one of those on points). So for us, yes, SK may earn more per flight we take if we aim to maintain status. But we may be indifferent as we'd not book a higher booking class and rather just buy C outright (but then also more to non-ST airlines. To date we've put more flights towards SK for status earning, however what we really want is a vacant middle seat, so unless SK changes that, we're most likely going to fly less C. For work, it is hard to me to buy SK as they're normally pricier than DY and all my work travel are on routes where SK and DY compete fairly liberally, so my preference for status has come for seat selection/fast track. Having been forced onto DY a couple times lately, for sub-1hr flights (ie the Nordic that I travel) I can probably live.
But the reality is that the SK value proposition for a C-traveller is horrendous. Over-crowded lounges (yes, industry trend) but with one of the worst food offerings and lack of blocked middle seat. So unless they fix this, SK will probably see less of me (us).
I am quite happy to buy BA and LH C for short-haul, and just go for the best provider for long-haul. I prefer OW (CX, BA, QR) which are much better in my view than most of *A (realise some will say SQ and TK but never flown them...) and whilst AF has a very good product, they've been very successful in pushing through premium pricing, and not sure if the value proposition is worth it anymore. This is for l/h.