Originally Posted by Eastbay1K

To the OP - while every once in a while, a petition might fall upon an ear that sometimes functions, I expect if you find ears at all, they'll be suffering from severe impairment. And here is why.

Although I don't know the OP, and many others in a similar boat (or airboat) outside of FT, the simple fact is that airlines no longer want to treat you like quasi-royalty based upon your spending and travel patterns. I say this as someone who had an excellent 30 year run with various airline and hotel programs (and I limit it to 30-ish years, because the past several years have resulted in substantial diminishing returns). This is not a criticism of people in your boat - for years, I was in a quite similar boat. But the USA had 50 to 100 million less people during much of this period and double the number of "major" airlines. For years, at the MVPG Luncheons, Rick R would repeatedly state how we don't want to devalue our Golds (as the airline grew and higher tiers were added) but we know how that played out. At least back then, there was some sincerity in the spoken words. But you can only be so sincere when you have 12F cabins, and even 16F cabins and keep expanding. And so, the slow moving coup continued.

Today, we have a program that gives us "choice," and what is evident is that the choice is while the airline still wants your money, it doesn't want to give you the benefits that you have become accustomed to based upon your travel and spend pattern. The airline's retort will be that "you can opt for $ spent" credit, which of course, hoses you, and benefits the last minute short hop, often on the company dime, traveler. As someone who is a UA MM and was on one of their planes pretty much every month for a decade, I can tell you exactly how it feels to fall "out of like." No "I'm never flying UA again" tantrums, but just some reality. And reality is hitting many long time (and in many cases, nearly captive) AS flyers. Boo for us. We technically have a fly a mile, earn a mile/point program, but it becomes more de facto spend with every change.

All that said, I wouldn't be surprised if there were some additional carrots for the 49/50 resident travelers. Just be prepared that there may be a stick driven up your other end as they're feeding you a carrot.