Bers - I do this thing for a living and am impressed by the enthuisiasm!Where have you got to - are you going to give Qantas your preferred program status. There are further recognition benefits to be announced for high value customer s and some surprise and delight as well.
Originally posted by bers:
I think they were having some problems - I was getting 500 Errors (internal server error) but things are back.
Even more positive is the complimentary Gold (current silver) card for a partner for 2100 credits (cheaper than BA!) and the 250 Credits = 1 Upgrade Credit idea. And the 7000/14000 lifetime statuses are just amazing. That means there are some very easy ways to get lifetime. That's only 233 trips in Business from SYD-MEL. Not much really.
The upgrades look pretty reasonable value and I love the status bonuses (25% extra for me!). The Bus to First upgrades are especially attractive.
No expiry is a sound marketing decision - doesn't cost them much I assume but removes a great barrier in perceptions. I know they got rid of the service fee now but what about joining fees?
Award levels will be signifcantly higher though. 40,000 New points for PER-MEL-PER Business class. I can get it for 37,500 old points today. Unfortunately domestic upgrades are now 1.6 times more expensive. It doesn't say anything about converting your 80,000 points to 50,000 after September, so maybe they are pricing awards high at this point as people will have lots of the "old" points to use up. I think maintaining it as a special balance and the old table (like AA did) would have been better.
However, gone is the days of getting "bonus" points in the States on a D Class RTW but flying in first as AA doesn't have Business Class. Under 2700 miles, Business and First earn the same.
But the miles thing has got me stumped. I just simply don't understand that bit. With kms used on UK roads soon (so I'm lead to believe), its inevitable that BA will change to Kms. Clearly, they've done a lot of matching to US programs. Maybe even too much!
I am genuinely considering my decision to have AA as my top choice program. At this stage in my life, QF will be my main airline that I fly on and these changes take out most of the problems that caused me to give the check in lady the shock of her life last month when I asked to have my QF number removed to put an AA number in instead. She'd never done it before!
Good series of changes and I suspect market forces will make them drop some of the levels of award bookings. For me, awards are not my priority - upgrades and status are. This is therefore great for me!
Just my first thoughts.