Originally Posted by
Adam Smith
With points being devalued, airline lounges ever more crowded, and so on, we may be testing the limits of how far airlines can go before people decide they're not getting value out of their expensive airline rewards cards, but it's quite clear that without an airline, loyalty programs are nowhere near as attractive.
And this is the crux of my point. I earn my status by flying and I want to be able to use the benefits of that status when flying - especially when a lot of my travel is OPM and not to places and at times of my choosing.
If AC leans too hard in the CC direction where I'm expected to manufacture spend on a CC in order to get benefits that I need when I am flying, or if they further their existing tragedy of the commons scenario where I'm left to fight over benefits scraps with a bunch of CC holders ... then their program isn't going to drive more loyalty and money from me. And maybe they'll make enough from CC holders they won't care that I am flying YOW-CDG-X or YOW-ORD-X instead of YOW-YYZ-X sometimes, which is entirely fine.
Anyway, I guess we will see, but for a long time we've known what "enhancements" have meant from AC - devaluation for people who actually fly their product. I don't expect this to be any different, and it has probably been a long time coming.