negative benefits
May 11, 2012, 2:55 pm
#1
Suspended
Original Poster
Join Date: Dec 2010
Posts: 1,161
negative benefits
I made a joke on here two weeks ago that the first one to make it to negative benefits for status passengers wins the frequent flyer program prize.
I hereby report that Air Canada / Aeroplan has officially won. The prize was won through an intricately planned boarding dance of a flight to Cancun from Toronto. No doubt AC had read my challenge here on Flyertalk and decided to show me what they were capable of when they really put their heart into it.
Here's how the plan rolled out:
1. Two lines set up for boarding. No signs of course.
2. Announcements went out for Elite, SE, business class to use the right hand line. Economy and non status the left hand line.
3. Then an immediate call for elites, business, etc. to line up. So up we get in line.
4. Immediate call for row 29+ to get in the left line, so up they go. Everyone getting into line at the same time.
5. Then passengers who need assistance were escorted to the priority (right hand) line and cut in front of the people there (not complaining about them being cut in, just that the order of announcements was wrong, and these people should have been pre-boarded before the elites / J lined up).
6. While sorting out the assistance they start boarding the economy passengers lined up in the left hand line.
So if you had status and were in row 29+ you'd have gone into the priority line, then been pushed back by the people cutting in for assistance. Meanwhile the economy non-status line was being boarded.
Thus, your elite status would give you a later boarding than you would have had with no status, and therefore AC wins the prize for displaying negative benefits for status.
Sadly, after about ten passengers were boarded, the left hand line agent figured out it probably wasn't appropriate to be boarding non-status economy class before business class and super elites, so they invited us into the left hand line to board with the Tangos, thereby limiting this incredible new enhancement to status benefits.
I hereby report that Air Canada / Aeroplan has officially won. The prize was won through an intricately planned boarding dance of a flight to Cancun from Toronto. No doubt AC had read my challenge here on Flyertalk and decided to show me what they were capable of when they really put their heart into it.
Here's how the plan rolled out:
1. Two lines set up for boarding. No signs of course.
2. Announcements went out for Elite, SE, business class to use the right hand line. Economy and non status the left hand line.
3. Then an immediate call for elites, business, etc. to line up. So up we get in line.
4. Immediate call for row 29+ to get in the left line, so up they go. Everyone getting into line at the same time.
5. Then passengers who need assistance were escorted to the priority (right hand) line and cut in front of the people there (not complaining about them being cut in, just that the order of announcements was wrong, and these people should have been pre-boarded before the elites / J lined up).
6. While sorting out the assistance they start boarding the economy passengers lined up in the left hand line.
So if you had status and were in row 29+ you'd have gone into the priority line, then been pushed back by the people cutting in for assistance. Meanwhile the economy non-status line was being boarded.
Thus, your elite status would give you a later boarding than you would have had with no status, and therefore AC wins the prize for displaying negative benefits for status.
Sadly, after about ten passengers were boarded, the left hand line agent figured out it probably wasn't appropriate to be boarding non-status economy class before business class and super elites, so they invited us into the left hand line to board with the Tangos, thereby limiting this incredible new enhancement to status benefits.
May 11, 2012, 7:43 pm
#3
Join Date: Jun 2010
Location: MEX
Programs: AC E75K
Posts: 4,171
At least you didn't have to go through my recent reverse priority boarding experience on UA:
Boarding was delayed for ~10 minutes with no signage updates or announcements. As expected, a large number of Premier Access customers started lining themselves up at the gate. When boarding finally started, they surprised everyone by boarding the Economy cabin first because the BusinessFirst cabin was not yet ready. Instead of announcing this over the PA system, the agents tried to inform people by yelling (the exact message was that they were boarding groups 1 through 3, except those seated in BusinessFirst). As you can imagine, chaos ensued as Economy passengers tried to jostle their way up to the gate. About 5 minutes later, the BusinessFirst cabin was now ready, and they tried to revert back to boarding BF customers. Of course, there was no way to stop the tide of Economy passengers now already at the gate. So the agents simply decided to expand boarding to groups 1 through 5. It was an absolute mess, especially since the jetbridge at gate C121 can only accommodate boarding through 1 aircraft door.
May 13, 2012, 5:45 pm
#5
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: YYZ
Programs: A3*G AC*nobody TK*nobody
Posts: 1,967
How about this. Back in March, we were in YUL standing in line for the delayed boarding LX F. And guess who trump the line? A group of people (4-5) being deported by CBSA... All GAs were "working" on something or talking to the CBSA officers, the only thing missing were the paparazzi...
May 13, 2012, 8:02 pm
#6
FlyerTalk Evangelist
Join Date: Jun 2003
Location: YYC
Posts: 23,804
May 14, 2012, 7:02 am
#8
Join Date: Jul 2008
Programs: Via Preference Privilege, AC*A, Fairmont Plat, SPG Gold
Posts: 1,334
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPad; CPU OS 5_1 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/534.46 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.1 Mobile/9B176 Safari/7534.48.3)
Renouncing your citizenship to get priority boarding would be extreme I think, even on FT 
Originally Posted by Away from YYZ
How about this. Back in March, we were in YUL standing in line for the delayed boarding LX F. And guess who trump the line? A group of people (4-5) being deported by CBSA... All GAs were "working" on something or talking to the CBSA officers, the only thing missing were the paparazzi...
May 14, 2012, 7:17 am
#9
Join Date: Aug 2002
Location: Canada - YYC
Programs: Starwood Plt, Hilton Gold (got it free) AC Elite, Fairmont Plt, Priority Club Plt
Posts: 439
Renouncing your citizenship to get priority boarding would be extreme I think, even on FT [/QUOTE]
I don't know? They might make you a British Lord, give you free room and board in Florida and an executive jet to bring you back to Canada.
[/QUOTE]I don't know? They might make you a British Lord, give you free room and board in Florida and an executive jet to bring you back to Canada.