canadiancow

The issue was more that there aren't any services that could be delivered.

F lounge access clearly fails for several reasons. Off the top of my head:
1. Many airlines don't have F lounges
2. The Senator lounge is LH's F lounge, so literally nothing would change in some of these situations

But then what else is there aside from preferred seats? Unless the entire alliance decides to adhere to a 6 zone boarding protocol, you can't consistently enforce any boarding perk beyond "priority", which already exists for *G.

jc94

skybluesea

Agree, despite my comments about lack of AC consistency, I now purposefully route myself, where practical, via the Big Smoke for simple reason to have dinner with Little SkyBlueSea every chance I get.

Use to be Montreal when LSBS attended McGill, so even though have had opportunity to visit SSL with paid J, seriously life far too short for attention to the wrong things...

kyanar

Not every airline even has the concept of "Zone" boarding - in my experience it's almost purely a North American concept, and utterly pointless when "Group 2" is more than half the plane anyway. Most of the airlines I've flown it's broken up into Economy/Premium Economy, *S/Business, *G/Preboarding (Special Needs).

I can't see an issue with F/lounge access though, NZ as an example has F lounge access on most partner airlines for GE and EP1 members, QF has F lounge access for P1 (and Plat, actually).

global happy traveller

they cant even get their codeshare and joint ticketing irops, redemption and reticketing straight......... on top of that, there seems to be a lack of interest in helping customers within the alliance but member of another airline.......

so my guess is, the airline executives would love to enhance (sarcastically speaking) everyone's experience like the old AC sayin "were not happy until your not happy"

as for reward space.... its prob gonna be Aeroplan market rate like redemption to have all carriers open their reward spaces up. If one was willing to pay 400,000+ for a round trip J to asia, sure more options. However if your expecting the old rate of 150-160,000 with more reward spaces from NZ, SQ etc..... think again!

nave888

I actually like this idea. I've always thought it strange that *A treats an E50K the same as a HON Circle or UA GS member.

*S is already horribly useless, so I can't imagine any changes there. Where I really see differentiation is higher up. Perhaps a split whereby *G is along the lines of Business Class-level, whereas *D (or whatever it is) is First Class-like - kind of like Oneworld does it?

Ie. First class check in, First Class lounge access (or business class + 2 guests), boarding before *G, free preferred seating, +2 bags, arrivals lounge access, etc. I can easily see LH, for example, giving *G Business Lounge access, and keeping the SEN lounges for *D.

m.y

Sounds good in theory, but with only Air China, Air India, ANA, Asiana Airlines, EgyptAir, Lufthansa, Shenzhen Airlines, Singapore Airlines, Swiss, Thai Airways offering first class. What can the likes of AC who only offer Business class offer to the new Top tier status members without gutting benefits from existing *G?

canadiancow

That would be interesting. Drop *G to the J lounge, and only let the higher tier in Senator.

But how many airlines split their lounges to that degree where this would matter?

If they want to give me higher standby priority, I'll take it. But I just don't see how they could consistently differentiate a higher tier without significantly gutting *G.

ffsim

yyznomad

What is the process for *A to engage member airlines on such things?

canadiancow

That was my point. I literally had this discussion with the former CEO of Star Alliance. @Adam Smith was there too, I believe.

He said there was nothing they could consistently offer.

So short of forcing many member airlines to make expensive changes, I don't know what they could do. And neither did he.

What makes this even harder is that most airlines in *A now seem to be favoring cabin over status. And in many cases, cabin on their own metal. SQ, LH, and AC all have lounges that are only accessible if you're on their metal in their highest cabin.

UA and SQ (and maybe others?) have better business lounges than for *G.

How do you convince them all to suddenly shift from "cabin wins" to "status wins"?

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KenHamer

oneworld always seemed like an alliance - a true alliance - to me. Didn't matter if i was using CP status on BA, BA status on AA, or AA status on QF, I always received exceptional service. On the other hand the so called Star Alliance always seemed a lot more like nothing more than an extended ceasefire. Anyone who has been turned away from an SQ, LH, or UA lounge knows what I'm talking about.

I see nothing has changed.

acysb87

Why mileage? I still do plenty of segments annually and those are revenue friendly to AC. Scrap the mileage and segments and make it revenue based .

frogster

Just to clear up some apparent misunderstanding: The SEN status at LH is a *G, the Frequent-Traveler level below is *S. The *P (or whatever ist would be called) at M&M would be the HON-circle member.
LH has 1st class Lounges at their hubs, only at outstation do they use the SEN Lounge for first class.

As far as I know, LH decided to give *G Access to their SEN lounges to resolve crowding issues (their own *S can access the J Lounges). A new *P level would not change that, but introduce crowding issues at the prime lounges that sometimes are available to their own top level status holders (Signature Suite, Polaris, FC-terminal/Lounge for LH, SQ Lounges,...). Most OW Lounges were designed with the access rules in place, so overcrowding is not the issue. BA furthermore introduced the Concorde room where ony ist highest level elites and FC passengers can enter...

canadiancow

Not quite. The LH FCLs are for LH group metal only. Someone flying another airline's first class ends up in the Senator lounge, regardless of status.