I think that the rush (and the subsequent pig's ear) is rather easy to explain.
Look at the mailing. It's all about being better than BA. bmi are responding to BA's Executive Club changes and trying to pick up some of their disgruntled customers. To make the comparison between programmes easier, they've made the transition to a miles based system (which I'm sure they were going to do at some point anyway) sooner than they planned.
Unfortunately, they've neither thought it through nor communicated it at all well. A good idea poorly executed.
Personally, I think this might be the end of the road for me and DC. The whole 50% miles for discount economy thing is very bad for me. I know that it's easy to say "ah, but you only need 38K for Gold", but if all my flying is discount economy then I need to fly 76K miles for *G compared with 50K on UA.
One other thing they haven't got right yet is making Gold significantly better than Silver. At the moment you get *G which is obviously a big benefit, but other than that it's not really that much better than Silver (apart from all these mythical Gold Card Holder Events...). They seem to think of us as one group (the mailing label on the mailing had "Active G/S" above my name for heaven's sake...). They could have so easily made to Gold points bonus more than 25% (or the Silver one less) etc etc etc.
I can only look forward to the arrival of the new guide in May...
[This message has been edited by Wingnut (edited 04-25-2003).]