You are making assumption that flying 30,000 miles cost more than flying 20 sectors. It may not be the case.

And often the short haul flights are more profitable than the lon haul flights.

Not when you are flying TPE-HKG-China

you would be surprised but most do not fly I-class.

Bahaha but if you ask me since Y crediting (guarantee Y) and Lounges are most important for you, stick with CX GO ^
AA Plat and AA EXP are pretty much dimes a dozen, do that DFW-HKG and you might have 30 EXPs awaiting an upgrade

I agree they will take a bit of a hit, considering how minimal the benefits of CX SL it already is.
I think the cost is more like $15-20 bucks a person, but still a cost nonetheless.


It certainly isn't for the Student crowd who fly HKG- Australia/NZ/Europe/Canada/US, only need 2-3 rt each year really.

Case above, but in the travelling students, how much is lounges for keeping them CX Loyal, not that much really.
Some students might fly J, for every 1, there might 10 in the back.


Agreed, try going to the Wing on Monday 7-8am, the line for the Haven is 10 deep!

Or fly one of those PVG/PEK commuter flights, DM/GO/OWE/OWS might be 75% of the flight :(

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Dont forget most students stay from break to break, most ticket ex hkg, a few might think about alternatives but many would just fly cx a la "ba is terrible, virgin is terrible" thinking from parents. Lounge? Gotta be great! Thinking. (I can think of my parents and percysmith's in ft already)

You might think students = price sensitive, but in reality cases is most likely negative.

I was not referring to I class

even less fly on low-Y fares.

I was only Gold for a little while before I advanced into DM, so I probably undervalued the Gold benefits. You are right, guaranteed V fare, lounge access, reasonable expectations of op-up chances, ability to use Admiral's Club when I fly domestic AA (right?), yeah, I'll probably stick with CX.

But if somehow I can't make GO, probably AA Plat is the way to go (50K miles)

for ultra-long haul connection SLs (e.g. Oz/NZ to Middle East/Europe) like me, unlimited lounge access is more like a strong 'perceived' benefit to keep loyalty; the reality is they probably don't need to access lounges for more than 10 times a year (4 access per round trip). giving them vouchers won't harm them much, while an unlimited lounge access is a 'feel good' factor which affect people's airline choice in favour of CX.

on these ultra-long haul routes one can basically chose to fly anyone; competition is intensive. thus, a stronger loyalty makes a difference.

if CX was going to push forward the proposition, i'd hope that they digitalised the voucher wherever possible. too cumbersome to have paper vouchers. air NZ's lounge access vouchers are digital ones. how CX could manage it with 3rd party outstation lounges is beyond my thinking though.

Say a typical Chinese living in America, Hong Kong is never their final destination. They take flight say from JFK to China city via HKG. So they use lounge once in JFK, once in HKG, then back the same, once in China City, once in HKG. That's 4 lounge accesses. Now, from JFK you needed two trips to make SL, so that's 8 lounge accesses. This is for bare minimal SL. Say they take one more trip, that's 12 lounge accesses, 45-50K SL. If they reduced SL to 4 per year or whatever low number, that's not helpful.

Now for a less frequent business traveler like myself. Say I went back to the level of twice a year, but I usually do 3 city CX/KA only hop. EWR-HKG-PVG-HKG-CTU-HKG-TPE-HKG-EWR. Yes, people like me go out of our way to stay loyal (i.e. more revenue) for CX. Even knowing full well these routes at our great detriment and CX offers very high fare for certain cities (I don't remember once I've gotten anything less than full Y fare for WNZ and TPE routes just so I can get the miles, CTU routes mostly full Y fare as well.) So one trip for me I needed to use the lounge 8 times. Two trips = 16 times. If CX is telling me to reward my loyalty, at full fare short-haul routes that's way overpriced vs. competitors, they will only give me access to lounge 25% of the time (4 lounge access per year), I will just go elsewhere.

I will probably go to MU for domestic, prices are competitive and you can always do last minute cash upgrades at $600-$1000 RMB onboard if not at check-in to J class. Not better than CX but way better than CX Y and much cheaper when all is said and done.

I really hope some CX management is reading this and realized a SL member is not as "cheap" as they think by just looking at mileage flown.

Consider the lack of the understanding of "unintended consequences" by QF management with respect to QFF OW Sapphire and Emerald members. And the extended family influence these members have (especially with respect to international).

I activated CX Silver because I could see loss of AA PLT by 2016 (or earlier)
even though I have AA "lifetime" Gold. Couple that with the loss of QF international flights exPER. Forward looking management is a rare breed these days.

Happy wandering

Fred

I guess the question here is, is it due to costs or is it due to crowds? If it's all about costs, then as long as the reduction in revenue is lower than the expenses saved, there's nothing we can argue on.

Which begs the question, does CX get bad data on cost saved vs. revenue lost, that's the argument here.

That's precisely my point. Those who qualify using sectors probably more profitable than those qualify by miles.

Someone can just fly 1-2 long haul flights and clock the miles. That's not very frequent flier right.