Originally Posted by
SPG_Fan
With the total gutting of MM, what are you folks thinking about in terms of providing them feedback?
For those that have a relationship with AC execs, are you going to bend their ear in private?
And for those that don’t, and you going to write in? If so what points to land? Something worth aligning on?
I'm currently SE 1MM.
I have 8 banked years of SE.
I will be 2MM before I lose SE in any plausible scenario.
I'm not saying I won't write in, but the last time I really pushed for something was when there was no AQD waiver for non-CA residents. And then they added one. And then they took it away again.
This crap was their "oh wow we didn't realize we completely gutted the MM program, we promise we'll fix it" response. And this was their fix. I have absolutely no confidence they'll actually fix it after this.
2025 is going to be the first year since 2013, excluding 2020 (for reasons) that I will not "requalify" for SE. I will retain SE, but not with 100k SQM + 20k SQD.
Why? Because I'm fed up with the negligible benefits I get as SE. Why would I spend $3000 on 014/AC when I can spend $2500 on 016/UA
and eliminate a connection?
The first year I earned SE, I was MRing the heck out of it in UA Y for pennies per dozen miles. But AC had an awesome program, so I credited everything to them, and spent extra money to ensure I'd hit the status.
Now I'm buying J, almost exclusively (I booked
one trip this year in PY because I felt disgusting getting no value out of my status, and wanted to use some eUps).
And what does SE get me?
A concierge who is useful primarily to fix AC's lack of technical prowess. Self-serve SDC works about 5% of the time. That is basically all of my concierge interaction. The rest is "hey my flight is cancelled but your system doesn't know it's cancelled so I need you to move me to a not-cancelled flight" ... "oh your system won't let you do it either? Great use of my 20k SQD"
Nothing other than the concierge has any tangible value, and the concierge is useful 95% of the time because of how crappy AC's entire technical infrastructure is.
There's that 5%, but it's not worth an extra connection, or an extra hundred dollars.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again. Over the course of my life, my spend on AC has remained roughly the same, but their profitability from my spend has increased, and the percentage of AC's take of my airline spend has drastically decreased.
This does not sound like they're doing the right thing.
TG fares now get 100% LQM. LT fares also get 100% LQM.
I guess I'll book TG next time I get stranded on a DH4 route. I would have booked FL at a minimum before. But realistically, CO.
And if I want to fly from SFO to not-Canada... Hello OAL