Originally Posted by
pbarnette
I don't know about that. For the promo to have a major impact on the elite ranks would require that enough people knew about the promo, cared enough to take advantage, were not bound to booking elsewhere than DL.com, and flew enough to get status. Moreover, for it to have a major impact on upgrade availability, those same people would need to fly enough after they had status to actually take away any upgrades. I'm not convinced that both are going to happen.
With all due respect, I don't know about that. In CLT for instance, DL elites are very plentiful. DL does not have enough seats from my discussions with its GAs here in CLT to accommodate its own ranks as is. Lord only knows, what 2x eqm will do to that. I don't blame DL, AA or UA one iota for running the related promo for whatever reason each may have (including without limitation, making the April to June nos. look better, to recover from negative press, etc). What I find shocking is that NW did not respond in kind, back in 05 when UA shot across the bow with 2x DEQM, NW responded in kind. One would have thought it would have responded in kind as well here. The fact that it has not is quite disappointing (at least to me). NW elites are rightly nervous (both high rev and high mileage flyers) as best as I can tell, and the defections are beginning as others can chime in on. Going to get really interesting over the next little while I think.YMMV Safe travels to all my Red Tail Flying Compatriots!