Repooc17

I understand where you are coming from. In all fairness, however, with or without this match promotion, your upgrade chances would be marginally the same given 1) your home airport(s) are represented by the majority of AS elite populations; 2) the chances of someone being granted a match and traveling on the same flight as you (if they are traveling at all) is close to 0%.

Zooming out, understand your relationship with AS (or any other airline) is mostly business transactions, and loyalty is a feel good word. All FF programs are underpinned as marketing based nowadays.

Flying for Fun

Either you are an AS Elite, or you are not! What is the purpose of watering down an Elite Tier for a subset of the group? "We would really like you to give us a try, but your benefits won't be what they would have been, had you earned them organically!" Great business move? No! You want your new member to enjoy all the perks in hopes they will become BIS Elites for the long-haul.

James

eponymous_coward

That generally hasn't been how status matches have ever worked- there's AA using EQD tiebreakers (which is a sort of tiebreaker for status matches, but EQDs, yikes, this isn't a path I want AS to go down) and DL using the DL AMEX Reserve card (in theory if I carried it as a newly minted DL Gold I would go AHEAD of long time DL elites who do not- I'm 100% on upgrades out of SEA, BTW). It's also awkward messaging to try and use elite status as a lure, but "well, actually we don't want you THAT much", were this to actually be public (and if it's entirely private/secret you'll get angry elites thnking their upgrades were stolen by those awful status matchers anyway).

How much internal programming do you want to do and cost do you want to incur to make up for the tiny number of FTers who obsessively stress out over every detail of AS's program? Ż\_(ツ)_/Ż The AS upgrade engine is already, um, to put it charitably, clunky (busts on same day changes for me back when I was an AS MVPG... something I didn't notice as a DL GM on a SDC over there).

eneq

Bolded emphasis is mine. AS must think that the amount of current AS elites who will move to a different carrier is a lower number than the amount of competitor elites they can bring in with this promo. I do agree with your reason for being upset. To bring up DL again, I was one of many DL-elites who have been very upset about the recent status match offer. But, airline loyalty is a one-way street. If we don't like it, we can change our flying habits.

anteater

I didn’t state that’s how status matches have operated; I proposed a method of potentially satisfying both sides. However, your stance is dichotomous; the staid match doesn’t have to be.

It’s trivial logic to program, even for a SAP backend. I agree AS IT isn’t the greatest and they would need to spend money to implement this.

I’d leave you with this thought: just because something has been doesn’t mean that is how I should be.

🤙🏻

simonsuo

Delta's offer is more generous to anyone else, one tier higher, from 10/1-5/31 ultra long qualification period, and no $ spending requirements either. It is very reasonable for DL elites to be angry. DL status is harder to get with their $ spending requirements. For folks like me, I would never get any meaningful status with spending requirements. With that being said, I did enroll the Delta offer with my MVPG, but I am not seeing myself on DL often tbh, the their regional upgrade certificate and the whole upgrade thing is just too complicated for me to take advantage of them. These status match offers happen all the time, just need to live with it.

eponymous_coward

So it's OK to be critical of airlines, just not of rants about them?

I simply think "loyalty" is for suckers (this is not to say good customer experiences are for suckers, if the airline is doing that for you, that's great, if they're angering you, well, do what you have to do). Assigning emotional values to large corporations is meant to make you make suboptimal decisions about your money that airlines or other businesses profit off of. It's marketing when an airline pushes it at you. Don't mistake the marketing for an actual emotion like loyalty. The brick isn't going to love you no matter how hard you have feelings for it.

You'd think, and then you see how janky AS's upgrade/rebooking system is in action compared to DL. I wish they would invest more in it like DL has. I get what you're saying.

I came in through that offer because I looked at it as a year-long opportunity to evaluate DL as a mid-level elite (and I've always been willing to use them out of SEA anyway), and AS's status carryover + mileage carryover basically means I can lock in at current status levels (or even go up the AS chain without ridiculous effort). DL got some 2020 and 2021 dollars for airfare from me because of it, they may get more. So that's a win for them, at the cost of some potential upgrades at a time when everyone has free capacity floating around. (I'm not sure of past 2021 because sustaining the status for me requires really investing hard in the DL/AMEX ecosystem, to the tune of directing most of my free credit card spend into DL AMEX cards, and accepting that my primary currency for flying F/J on awards is going to be SkyPesos™ going forward, not AS Mileage Plan, AVLifeMiles, or whatever AMEX transfer partner might work best. Blech.)

I've done the same with WN as well as an A-Lister- it's helpful to look at the other side of the fence now and then.

miamiflyer8

I apologize if this was mentioned earlier in this thread, but can one match using 2019 flights for 2020 status with 2020 having basically 0 flights? How would one prove that off the DL site?

Bowgie

Good point. I copy/pasted all 30 pages of my 2019 flying into a pdf and had it ready to go with a jpg of my current Delta status page only to find that the Alaska form only accepts ONE file upload. I uploaded only the status page, which has previous year's MQM's. If that is not good enough, then no loss. I fly SAN-SEA a lot, and the choice is between a Delta A319 and an older Alaska 737. AS and DL usually match prices.

isaacchambers

You can merge PDFS all together......thats what i did ....Bluebeam stapler

NoLaGent

And if you're on a Mac, you can do it within a built-in tool on Preview, which I do on a daily basis. Here's directions for both platforms:

https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-c...-one-document/

Waitlisted

They fact that these new match folks get the 50% bonus for the rest of the year while (assumably) those of us loyal for years as elites don’t is kind of a punch in the gut. I sure hope they extend it for the rest of us too.

anteater

I didn’t even catch that. I truly hope they extend 50% EQMs for the rest of us.

Repooc17

Interestingly, matched status holders would only get the additional 50% for the 2H of the year, but not anytime prior. It would have been easier to just get them on the same timeline as existing elites, or give everyone the same deal; instead of some missing out 1H, and others 2H, as it stands now.

Applicable T&C below. Bolded text again my doinig:

NoLaGent

I don't think so. All members receive 1H and members registered and approved for the matched status also receive 2H.