DEQM Doom
 

Didn't Larry & Jeff tell us there were about 100,000 Plats in the system last year?

With the DEQM offer, I wonder how many Plats, Golds, and Silvers there will be next year?

Offsetting the DEQM increase, of course, is the general economic downturn. But my observation is that most high rev and high miles fliers I know are continuing to fly, at only slightly reduced rates.

Probably many vacation only travelers will drive to grandma's, rather than fly CO to SJU or LON. But CO's backbone business travellers are still flying. Except we'll have more competition for that coveted transcon EUA.

I have highly mixed emotions about the DEQM offer. On the one hand, I like getting DEQM. On the other hand, I've been top tier since Bronze/Silver/Gold days. Three months of DEQM means there's going to be a lot more Plats to fight with over EUA's later this year and next year. I percieve that CO's free UG benefit to me is being diluted.

SO... What's your best guess at the number of 2010 Plats?

B7

I don't know if I'd agree with that assumptions. I know a lot of people who have had their travel significantly reduced, eliminated completely (at least temporarily), or lost their job altogether.

I think there will be far fewer Plats than last year. Certainly not a "lot" more.

Well we can start by testing those assumptions on flyertalk.

How many in this forum will achieve a higher elite status for 2010 than they otherwise would have achieved without the DEQM offer?

Personally my elite status for 2010 will be unaffected by DEQM.

FT is by far not a representative sample of CO's customer base.

How many times are we going to have this debate, did we really need another thread

It'll last until February 2011, when the DEQM elites finally bite the dust :D.

My own guess is that the vast majority of elites don't even know about the DEQM offer and never signed up for it. As for those who did, they'll be more than offset by the reduction in travel.

I agree with that fully, TPA-EWR recently had me sat next to one of those people who seemingly lives on planes, but who was oblivious to flyertalk (not to mention typically buys F :eek: ). So for every one of me - would have gotten silver and will be getting gold before the end of the year - there's one of my seatmate and likely 1/3 of a person who dropped or didn't fly as much.

Overall it may be a few more elites, but remember, these are elites who may not have that status if not for DEQM so they don't fly as much. I doubt there will be a noticeable effect.

+1

+1

And most people not on FT would refer themselves to an insane asylum for thinking they should spend hundreds of dollars to uselessly fly and turn and around just to get EQMs.

Same here (most likely). This is partly because a good deal of my EQMs come from OAL ST flights; about 1/3 of my flights during the DEQM period were on NW (it's hard to pay triple price for CO, even if it does yield quadruple EQMs).

I'll assume that the distribution of OP members per EQMs range is somewhat exponential (or similar decreasing distribution; I need to brush up on my statistics). Therefore most Silvers earn EQMs closer to 25k than to 50k and most Golds earn just over 50k (this may not hold true for Plats, since the upper bound of that bucket is massive).

Assuming an even distribution of travel throughout the year, doubling EQMs for three months increases EQMs earned by 25% (actually, less, since OAL EQMs are not doubled). Therefore we can expect that significantly less than 25% of current Elites will go up a level. Of course the # of Silvers may go up.

I recently sat (in Y) next to someone who flies 500k+ miles/year, mostly on CO (enough to be friends with the FA). He had no clue about how the OP program worked, especially wrt upgrades. Of course this dude has no reason to care about DEQMs.

+1,000

Seriously...of everyone i know who is still traveling out there (both business and pleasure) not a SINGLE one of them knew or registered for this offer...even after telling them about it...

I'm Gold, where I would have only been Silver. I agree with our disagreement with the OP's statements, and I wonder what he/she was concerned with? The only 'dilution' of benefits would be for upgrades, and based on other threads, that tends to be wide open these days for Plats (even to the point of empty FC seats) except for those EWR-LAX/SFO/IAH flights.

Agree also that this has been threaded ad nauseum

What fraction of airline passengers are uninformed consumers, not observant to deals?
 

That's wierd. It was on the scrolling banner on CO.com. I wonder Clearly this forum is for the other end of the spectrum.

Hey Scott!! What fraction of OP elites registered for the DEQM Promotion?

Silly them, who didn't.

B7