Originally Posted by
samjaynz
It's a rubbish naming convention (same with Business Premier Luxe, as you say ... totally nebulous naming that doesn't make any sense)
Also, I refer to djsflynn comment above about 'Blacks'. I am in no way insinuating any negative/racial intent in his/her comment (nor am I trying to make this any kind of racial discussion per se) BUT you can see how with no ill-intent a customer might drop the 'Koru' from 'Koru Black' and talk about 'Blacks boarding the aircraft' etc and it sounds bad ... did nobody in Air NZ learn about Rosa Parks at school? In the same way that most people don't talk about being "Airpoints Gold" or "Airpoints Elie", just Gold or Elite.
Considering Air NZ typically positions itself as a fairly "right on" and socially forward-thinking company, I'm honestly astounded this hasn't been picked up on.
This was where my mind went to initially as well. Like, I get the logic - Black Card is a status symbol - but when used in the context of a widely-held frequent flyer program it starts to fall apart and the risk of offending people is high. I bet the Air NZ loyalty team all thought they nailed this, and today is proving to be a sobering experience given the amount of back-pedaling and on-the-fly changes they are having to make