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

Also: The OP feels that business travel did not go down much, and this may be valid as an observation about people s/he knows. But as a general claim it's contrary to what the airlines themselves openly admit, as well as what I can infer from being 3/6 on upgrades this year, including 1/2 on EWR-SFO... as a Silver travelling exclusively on co.com discount fares.

(btw I will probably hit gold this year through DEQM)

Woo-eee! 500k miles/year. How on earth does he do that. He must live on airplanes!

The only thing DEQMs did for me was get me to platinum earlier in the year.

Me too. I also agree with the other statements on this post. I spoke to 4 or 5 people about the promo in BF or F and they did not know about it. I figured they did not are b/c the were going to hit plat anyway this year.

Most of the genral public does not visit continental.com every five minutes of the day like most of us. :p

Well if they don't need to register in order to gain status, then at least for the extra EQMs toward MM, no?

I had to drag my colleague with whom I made the trip to FCO to co.com to register him for the DEQM promo. He's silver now and with registering will have a great shot at gold this year. But he still doesn't get why I was pushing him on it. :rolleyes:

I think the vast majority of OnePass members were oblivious to the DEQM promo. I discussed it with a few seatmates and found that most had no clue about it but were excited about extra EQM when told about it.

the DEQM promo did 2 things for me:
1) Got me to plat 4 mos early
2) Got me to spend some money on DL

+1

I made Plat in April instead of May because of DEQM's.

Spoke with 5 Elite travelers on recent flights and only one was aware of the promotion.

I've never made Plat until this year and that's only because of the DEQM and a few timely TATL flights. However, I have been Gold for 10 years in a row and currently have 950,000 miles in my OP account. For me, it's a nice benefit to be rewarded with Plat for at least a year.

As for competing, I will certainly now look down upon the lowly Silvers and Golds and scoff with utter disdain as I promenade down the jetway...at least for another year. ;)

WOW. 100,000 Platinums on CO? I had heard AA only had like 60,000 EXP and they are bigger than CO. I guess that extra 25,000 miles/points to hit top tier makes a big difference!

LOL!

B7

The only thing the DEQM promo did for me was get me way closer to Gold than I normally would be, tempting me to go on a mileage run later this year. :eek:

That is most likely total miles earned from all means and not BIS miles!

Same here, it is COs $500 B Fares to NRT that are doing it for me!

Only every five minutes, your such a novice! ;)

Once you go PLAT you will never go back! Perhaps you should shout to get those additional 50K miles and give PLAT to someone in the family next year!

Only thing I didnt like about the promo is that is started 7 days after my SEA-IAH-NRT RT in B and ends 15 days before my second trip! :(

DEQM effect
 

For me, I've had no trouble making Silver, but only twice (in high-travel years) have I made Gold. This year, I expect to make Gold without worry.

I did take a weekend trip IAH-YVR--I had intended to go somewhere that weekend just for a getaway, but the DEQM made me spend a few hours figuring out where I go that was the furthest distance for a decent fare.

I wish I could find the article, but I know I read one where AA said that even with their DEQM offer, they expected fewer elites overall next year.

+1 Thanks to DEQM, Ill be Gold next month instead of Silver.

Me, too. :D Couldn't have done it without the DEQM deal. My business travel is down this year.

Only one of my co-workers signed for DEQM even after I told them about the promotion. He did solely because I walked him through the step. It took less than 2 minutes. He and the rest of my co-workers complained for another 10 minutes about having to register. Oh well,...

So, rest your fears Bernoulli 777. I for one should be PLT again solely because of the promotion. Without the promotion, I would drop one rank to gold.

At the next "do", the doomsters saying that we're going to be overrun with fake plats should get together with all the people who spread the word about the promo to strangers and "discuss".

I'll sell popcorn.

What the DEQM gave me was about 17k additional EQM. While I would have gotten it sooner or later, since I need to retain Plat as a NWA refugee, it is nice to have a bit of pressure taken off.

I will be flying on CO in Biz this year, but it's all from burning NW miles. I aim to have all my NW miles gone before I drop down to dirt next year.

the DEQM knocked off a few months on my quest towards 1MM -- I probably picked up 30k during the promo (made plat in may) so not a major source of EQM even for someone who travels a lot. If you were going to make plat by flying 80k/year, thats a bit less than 7k per month. I think DEQM was 2.5 months (?) so for a plat thats an extra 15-20k miles. For most silvers and golds, the DEQM would be <10k miles so I doubt the dilution is that big