Shareholder, you're right I should have defined "unlimited".
Yes, I considered the option to pay C$350 to upgrade round-trip YOW-YVR-LAX-YVR-YOW to be "unlimited stickers". I know there are those who wouldn't pay that much, but no matter how inefficiently I might use my initial and threshhold stickers, I could never find myself unable to upgrade due to lack of stickers (flying only in North America, one will eventually run out of stickers/certificates, e.g. it takes about three upgraded round trips YOW-YYZ-LAX to earn two threshhold upgrades, enough for one round trip).
What I was getting at, was that if CP had given 125% for upgraded flights, with the unlimited sticker supply, I would have had almost 8800pt for every round trip through YVR, meaning four trips for Gold status and 10 for EP. So I accept that the lack of a 25% bonus on upgrades was balanced both by the lower target (in the case of EP) and by the increased upgrade opportunities (in the case of G). Of course on a discount domestic flight, the upgrade was still doubling the points earned.
But now, both the availability of stickers and the targets are identical, so the 20% lower point value on CP upgrades is much more significant.
I agree the target change is significant, but for Gold, I actually think the lack of upgrade opportunities will make a bigger difference (domestically anyway) -- if I were flying to Vancouver monthly this year, I'd be getting 50% points on a significant number of flights.
You reminded me of something else. The two NA certs on AC will get me YOW-YYZ-LAX. But using CP stickers it would take 5x500 to do that. Last year it didn't matter much because I could always buy one more. But with limited stickers, it becomes significant. One threshhold package from AC will get me to LAX in J. One threshhold package from CP will not (I'm not suggesting it's top of the list, but in addition to flying in the back YOW-YYZ, it will also cost me 250 Q-miles to use CP stickers instead of AC certs).
As usual, we agree.
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andrew
[This message has been edited by Andrew Webber (edited 05-03-2000).]