This thread reminds me a story I heard many moons ago.

A guy is travelling on a country road early one morning in the winter and swerves to miss a deer and ends up in a ditch. He gets out and see’s he’s really stuck and will need a tow. Checks his phone and there is no cell service.

He looks around and sees a farmhouse not too far away with smoke coming out of the chimney. Figures he could go up and ask the farmer if perhaps he could give him a tow with his tractor.

As he is walking down the road before getting up to the driveway, he tells himself “There is no way a busy farmer is going to leave his warm house this morning to help some random guy. Maybe I should just ask if I could use his phone…yeah, that would be better.”

Turning into the long driveway walking against the strong wind he starts thinking “Why would this guy let some unknown person into their house? There is no way. Maybe I’m better to just ask if I can use a shovel and I’ll dig my way out.”

As he gets to the stoop he starts thinking “Really? Shovels are expensive and this guy probably thinks I’ll just drive off with his shovel and he’ll never see it again…”

He gets to the door and knocks with frustrated vigor, the Farmer opens the door and says: “Good Morning, what can I do for you?” The guy answers angrily: “You can take your shovel and shove it up your ...!!!” then turns wound and storms back up the driveway leaving a very confused farmer wondering what happened and sipping his coffee.

The moral of the story is: don’t get worked up making assumptions in the face of lack of information.

At the moment:

• We do not know for certain that any major changes are coming.
• Despite this there will always be changes to any programme. Programmes evolve a step or two behind the changes in the industry. Change is inevitable.
• Airlines have adequate data to make decisions based on the data, consumers tend to make decisions based on les than logical reasoning. The whole loyalty game is based on that.
• Regardless of any changes made to the programme, everyone on FT combined is not representative of any significant sales or passenger traffic that could alter an airline’s decision to make or modify changes. FT is a data point and a significant outlier at that. Read: You are not important to the airline individually regardless of your spend, or years of loyalty. This is a business transaction and both parties need to be happy with the outcome. Also It is also not a zero-sum game
• Judging by the Chicken Little reaction that came out of FT on the major overfall of BAEC this winter, I am wasting my time with this post, but hey… I’m not affected by any changes so perhaps 1% of people will appreciate the logical pragmatic perspective? Yeah… likely not.

Now I suggest everyone take a step back, analyse the situation from 10,000 feet and prepare to recite the serenity prayer as a mantra through all this because it will happen and embrace acceptance. The only thing in life we can possibly hope to control is ourselves and nothing more. Enjoy the chaos.

OK… I’m done. Carry on.