Originally Posted by
Tafflyer
Were the mileage thresholds for A3*G too low and unsustainable for the airline? Probably. But, but only a small mileage increase to 18,000 yet a tripling of the A3 flight requirement to 12 seems excessive, especially as the marginal revenue for that is questionable when you can buy Eco Light tickets for under €30 sometimes.
You assume that people who are gonna fly SKG-ATH-LCA three times in one day make a significant proportion of customers
In the end it's about balancing things out. A3 apparently still sees a lot of value in status being relatively easy to get for its actual customers. They're trying to maintain that while also getting rid of people who just use A3 as a vehicle to get benefits on other airlines.
I suspect the number of people willing to do crazy mileage runs is substantially lower than number of people willing to take a holiday in Greece/Cyprus/Turkey/Tunisia/Egypt once a year.
I think this is just a way of "tilting" membership towards Greek residents, probably under pressure from the ever more greedy Lufthansa Group.
Why on earth would Lufthansa care? They may be evil, but they're not the source of all evil in aviation
Also, these changes don't necessarily favour Greek residents. They simply favour people who fly A3 on a regular basis. I'd argue that it would be easier for me as a VIE-based traveller to earn status than for someone ATH-based, since I earn four sectors per trip (assuming I'm not going to ATH itself) and they only earn two. Thus I only need three trips on A3 per year to fulfill the segment criteria (which I actually do anyway, despite having no interest in A3 status), whereas they need six.