I would like to challenge one piece of thinking that has apparently become accepted wisdom: that we are very understanding of airlines who require a minimum of flights or spend on their own metal for status.

Why? Of course, most people that simply repeat the narrative say that it makes sense that an airline should not give privileged status for people that never fly on its planes. But does that really matter? If somebody never flies AFKL but reaches FB Platinum status by flying, say, Delta and virgin Atlantic, then that isn’t a problem for AFKL. Because AFKL will never have any cost associated with delivering benefits (lounges, call centre, etc) to that person who always flies Delta and Virgin Atlantic. In such a situation, flying blue merely becomes an accounting platform for that passenger’s travel.

On top of that logic, I doubt that there are many people who are member in a frequent flyer program without ever setting foot on that airline. Sure, a few people here on flyer talk optimise their status chase that way - and I must admit, that since a few weeks I am one of them, crediting all my British Airways flights to Finnair after BA has shown me the middle finger, But it’s very unlikely that I will fly Finnair (simply don’t have to go to Finland, and for connections they are out of my way).

But cases like this are a very small minority, and where they exist, as laid out above, there is hardly any cost associated with them since they don’t use any of the airline’s benefits.

So maybe we can move away from that received wisdom of « it makes sense for airlines to require a minimum number of flights or spent to achieve status in their FFP »?