Option 1: Alexis’ quest to become a “premium leisure” carrier that caters to vacationers means they just don’t care. Perhaps they just don’t want us frequent fliers or business travellers. Maybe the mandate was “Who cares? Just slash it.”

Option 2: They thought we wouldn’t notice. The communication seemed to tread very lightly around increased qualifying spend requirements. But you really had to read pretty carefully to realize they slashed the heck out of the tier rewards — which is where most of the value to being a loyal WS customer came from.

Regardless, they probably won’t care what us customers think. I’m sure some of their loyalty people read FlyerTalk, and the reaction is likely, “it figures, the peasants are angry with us … but just watch, they won’t leave”.

And they might not notice people “quiet quitting” WestJet over this. It will be incremental … on routes where people have a choice, or on routes where WestJet is more expensive but where loyalty would still steer a decision to WS. I actually booked a flight just yesterday and - looking at my options - thought “why bother” when it came to WS. I booked on AC, where I now have comped 25k status thanks to Marriott.

I’m by no means done with WestJet. But I now have no need to drive more Q spend with them.