wjw

I still don’t see why Aeroplan earning bonuses would be attractive to someone who doesn’t fly often. There are some great cash back rewards cards that would probably generate far more advantage to a non-flyer or extremely occasional flyer than an ultra premium airline branded card.

And it’s somewhat irrelevant anyway as these people aren’t really using the benefits anyway, since as we already noted they are FOTSG.

I think it’s a smart move to reduce domestic/transborder crowding to remove those from lounge access that fly enough to crowd the lounge but not enough to make the airline significant revenue.

If they started offering lounge access on the $120 credit cards I’d be a lot more inclined to agree on this, as lots of people hold $120 cards linked to rewards/loyalty programs they don’t make frequent use of. I just don’t see people that don’t fly very often rushing to get a $600 credit card for that specific airline. They will likely sign up lots of 35k’s which I’m sure it also part of the plan. Either reduce crowding or make some extra revenue to keep providing the perk.

YOWgary

Lots of people who don't fly every week, still want to fly business-class to their vacation.

Changeup2000

YMMV, but I do not see the NA and Sun zone PY priority rewards that valuable. Outside YYZ to CUN, I am not sure if there are that many PY cabins available to Sun destinations.

I would see better strategy is to book Latitude and instantly upgrade which does not need a PY priority reward.

yyckerr

Lots of people (me) fly their entire families to their vacation on points. Those accelerators and redemption efficiencies really start to make a difference when redemptions are in J at scale.

Adam Smith

People don't always behave (entirely) rationally. Travel is aspirational. It's exciting to think about redeeming a bunch of points for a cool trip somewhere. For many people, that provides more of a rush than getting, say, 1% cash back. Because most people don't do a valuation of their points, they may not realize that the flights they ended up redeeming only yielded 0.8% and they would have been better with the cash back card.

Maybe if I throw some real numbers at this problem, people will better understand it...

When TD took over a big chunk of the Aeroplan business in 2013, it bought "about half" of CIBC's portfolio, which was about 550K accounts. So let's say TD bought more than half and there were 1MM Aeroplan visa accounts. Some proportion of those will have been people with more than one card, but that also doesn't include the Amex portfolio. So why don't we assume those net out to zero and say there were 1MM Aeroplan cardholders back then.

The business has likely grown, because TD invested a lot of dollars in winning new customers, and AC, TD, CIBC, and Amex put on a huge marketing push after the new program. And now there's a Chase card. But let's say it's still flat at 1MM accounts.

Going back about 15 years, there were about 135K elites. Travel has grown, the loyalty space has grown, the population has grown, so that number will have gone up a bunch. Tempered by the introduction of metal requirements then AQD, but now offset with some of the new programs and promos. Let's say the number is almost double at 250K.

That still means there would be 750,000 people with Aeroplan cards and zero elite status with AC. So there are plenty of FOTSGs out there signing up for Aeroplan cards.

It also means that even if those people only take one trip a year, there are an awful lot of them. If each one were to do one round trip a year and only access a lounge once in each direction, that would be 1.5MM potential lounge visits a year, or over 4K a day. Now, not all of those people will have the Premium cards that give unlimited lounge access, or some of the other cards that give a few one-time passes, but even if you make that 2K visits a day, it's quite a few when you think about lounge capacity. If YYZ Dom has capacity for ~300, having an extra 30 people in there at peak time due to a credit card can make the difference between the lounge being 95% full (285/300) and a 15-person lineup to get in (315/300). I've also ignored guests because I forget the guesting rules for the various CCs, but that would push the number back up.

The ~$600 cards come with unlimited lounge access. Some of the cheaper cards come with a limited number of passes. I think in the old days the Infinite cards got one or two, and maybe you had to be on an Aeroplan reward, but I think that might be gone. I think one of the business cards offers passes for hitting spend milestones. I don't have time to go look up the details right now.

acysb87

Exactly what I used to do on YYZ/BGI route
Dreamliner service during peak season/winter months.

zkzkz

So I'm really surprised by the lack of one-time passes. I assume this is because the immediate motivation is to reduce crowding and adding one time passes would undermine that. But in the absence of that pressure I would have expected replacing unlimited access with something like 4 domestic plus 2 international passes. That would make 35k squarely somewhere between 25k (2 domestic) and 50k (unlimited international).

Remember that 35k used to be *G and so dropping it to essentially the same as 25k is a pretty big drop.

Priority baggage is about the second most worthless benefit (after the entirely worthless "priority standby") The N.A. PY priority awards are basically worthless (J would be worth something but PY within North America? It hardly exists and isn't worth anything where it does.) Extra eupgrades are fine but it's not much of an increase, it's a select benefit, and the copays mostly make them much less valuable for most people anyways.

Joeyjo

I think there’s a decent middle ground between FOTSG and 25K/35K. I originally got the VIP card because I was flying once a month short flights for work and the priority boarding was worth the cost to make those boarding experiences not terrible and get overhead space on the small commuter planes. Some years I’d eke out 25K by segments but I’d often fall short even though I’d have more than enough SQD.

At the time I didn’t get MLL access with the card but had priority pass which was useful in YYZ (although I rarely used it).

It’s really a shame that my work travel stopped with Covid when the new Aeroplan is really set up so much better for the type of travel I was doing.

Altaflyer

While these changes don’t have a negative impact on me personally, I am not a fan of such changes after the customer has done his part by flying only to have expected benefits eliminated.

User8181416

The changes will probably benefit me as a SE but I think this is a fair point. If I was at 30K miles and did a mileage run to get 35K for lounge access, I'd be annoyed. This is pretty obviously a reactive measure to try to curb overfilled lounges, and this is probably the lowest hanging fruit.

NikinYOW

I for one am happy to see this. Lounges are too crowded these days. A line up to get in, then once you get through almost impossible to find more than one seat together... not exactly the best experience, especially for those spending thousands of dollars on paid J.

YZF_Elite

I wonder if the WS pull out in eastern Canada has anything to do with this too. The risk that frequent travelers who don't hit 50k running to WS I always thought was one of the reasons AC didn't follow UA a number of years ago when UA essentially made 50k the threshold to real benefits. As someone who has essentially spent the past 20 years flying 25-75k (mostly 45-65k on average) almost exclusively domestic I know I've always had a choice and my 35k/50k benefits are a large part of what has always kept me with AC. I'm generally around 65-80k average in recent years so this doesn't affect me, but now a lot of those 35-45 segment domestic travelers will now need a credit card or look elsewhere. Guess the gifting 35k to someone just lost a lot of value too!

With more basic fares taking over the past ten years, it's really business travel that keeps me in status. In past years I would have had a few personal trips contributing to my totals or a mileage run or two to get 50k if I was short a little, but it's pretty seldom I'll buy a flex fare on personal travel now.

Interesting times, hope this helps with the YVR lineups and YYZ elevators in particular.

wjw

While I agree some of your broader points, I really don't think it's fair to say you are throwing some real numbers when there are a handful of real numbers in what you lay out but also a lot of: "why don't we assume", "business has likely grown", "that number will have gone up a bunch", "Let's say the number is", etc... Of course with AC holding true counts close to their chest we will never know these definitively, but I don't think we can call these real numbers with the amount of guess work that's going on with coming to them. However, I agree that they are probably in the ballpark.

I agree with this and your larger point about the aspiration aspect of travel driving cards, I'm just not convinced it extends to the ultra-premium. I know a lot of people with $120 annual fee cards, and very few with $500+ annual fee cards. When I think of FOTSG I think people that:

• Don't know what Aeroplan is
• Don't know that credit cards can be made of metal
• Book their travel through a third party for the cheapest price they can find regardless of carrier
• Don't know what an airport lounge is
• Don't know what Business Class is (although they seem to know what "First Class" is when they enter the plane and see the Business Class cabin and then loudly making jokes with their kids about how only millionaires get to sit up there)

That said, I don't think it's out of the realm of possibility that 750k infrequent fliers would sign up for the $120 card; I just don't think they're FOTSG

Don't believe the $139 CIBC or TD cards come with anything now, nor can I find any reference on Amex's site about their $120 card. I did find this on the Air Canada site, which states they get a guest pass for every $10,000 in spending. However, I wonder if this is out of date as it is not advertised by the card issuers and the TOC of the Air Canada page say that it is provided for information purposes only and to refer to the TOC of the credit card.

I think Air Canada just had to do something to alleviate crowding in the Domestic and Transborder lounges and it was easier to cut the 35K's out than it would be to cut the $600 credit cards out. Essentially evens the playing field with the International MLL's which in my experience haven't really been hit with as severe crowding issues, at least based on the comments I've read. I don't fly domestic/transborder so never in them to see how bad they've gotten. Although I will be in the YUL Domestic MLL for a short jaunt on a TATL that I couldn't route direct to YYZ in November!

Changeup2000

Is it even a thing?

Adam Smith

I was transparent about what numbers were what. The goal of that post wasn't to try to estimate exactly how many people are accessing any given lounge at any given time based on their credit card, but simply to point out that because there are so many Aeroplan credit card holders - we know with a high degree of confidence it was over 1MM in 2013 - even if each one doesn't fly much, it can add up to a number that's meaningful with regards to overcrowding.

We have different views of what a "FOTSG" is then. To me, it's a state of mind more than a question of how much someone actually travels . I have friends who are SEs (one is SEMM!) that I would call FOTSGs because they're very unsophisticated in their knowledge of Aeroplan, status, etc. Meanwhile, there are some on this board who don't fly a ton, yet are far better informed than my FOTSG SE friends, and I would not refer to those people as "FOTSGs", even if they only take one or two trips a year.