NoWindowSeat

Yes. But _not_ exHEL with normal corporate pricing, with mileage runs and seeking for special deals with open travel days with positioning of course but that is not comparable, those guys are that 0,01%. Plus, LH J qualifiers in general do not crowd the lounges 😁

intuition

I think you are trying to make it easy to dismiss the issue. I don't see any posting driven by envy.
The notion that "LH business class is the sweetspot of the program" is pure höpö. There is nothing in the program that caters to the longhaul J flyers! So even if it is supposedly "easy" to qualify by flying longhaul J, there are no gains doing so. Honestly, can someone tell me one thing Finnair plus is doing for someone flying longhaul business in order to keep them loyal?

So for NoWindowSeat's suggestion, let's turn it around. Make Finnair plus tiers only reachable by segment instead.

It makes a lot of sense. Perks are already geared towards commuters and with the new upgrade facility, upgrades are almost only useable by the segment elite.

AY longhaul business is nothing to write home about. As such, it is a very nice loyalty gift for a segment flyer who doesn't care what segment gets upgraded. Voucher upgrades makes great sense. But seen as a premier travel class to pay real money for? They created a very dense cabin, they cut the food service and now they are cutting back on staffing. So in the air, LH J is not good value for money and there are virtually no perks in the program to offset that.

Finnair is the only airline having a super-tier achievable on segments and there probably is a reason. They should be upfront about that and just make the program a true frequent flyer program: Remove the tier points altogether.

WilcoRoger

Remove tier points = remove loyalty of LH J fliers and that would REALLY hurt the bottom line.

HEL-NRT or HEL-SIN with AY or with QR (for less money)? The proposed setup would even more drive towards QR, as that would be 2x the amount of legs. Or just ditch AY+ altogether. Or look at *A.

FFPs really can drive loyalty, but can also drive customers away.

Personal experience - I used to be very loyal to Lufthansa Group, going out of my way to fly them and retain SEN. They tweaked the program in a way that made M&M much less attractive for me, so ever since I have flown less then twice a year with them on average and only EU shorthaul when they were the cheapest.

Next up was BAEC - went out of my way (literally) to fly them, putting up with their dorm J class, was OWE with them for years. Then I set my eyes on GGL and they moved the goalposts - bye BAEC and also by BA. Cannot remember my last BA flight.

On the other hand - TK’s M&S has been good to me, so I fly them regularly both shorthaul (they have lots of destinations in SE Europe) and longhaul, taking care to keep my TK*G status - and bringing them €€€€ in the process.

tulokas

I think Plat Wing is an effort to make LH elite pax happier as segment runners can’t enter if only going to OUL Unfortunately OWE benefits on outstations seems to be better than the ones they get at HEL. But benefits on board... Nothing I guess. You get served first? Is that something that will keep them loyal . It seems that AY needs F cabin instead of PE to keep LH elite pax happy

NoWindowSeat

Exactly how I see it, AY Plus is already a program geared for Y flyers and people doing lots of segments. They could well just go all in with that and stop pretending. Plat Wing is the only good thing (and that is nice!) they have for loyal LH J flyers, as segment guys do, mostly at least, schengen routes.

Having poor J class further confirms this, AY’s only marketing weapon is cheap pricing, not the product itself.

DrSickle

I was merely pointing out why I don’t think the points would be much better in the end and would favor a revenue based system instead. My choice of words was in retrospect rather poor, I have an unfortunate habit of seeing malicious intent everywhere and for that I apologize.

As pointed out, there are many other flaws in the program in addition to the qualification rules that a larger overhaul should be in order (particularly with revenue J passengers in mind). However, creating high quality in general is hardly to be expected from Finnair.

Out of honest curiosity, what do other FF programmes offer to their top-tier members flying highest cabin in revenue?

NoWindowSeat

I think you have a point. 3/4 class airlines offer not so much often for rev. F flyers...at best dedicated lounges/terminals, 241s and such. But when you have F, you can for sure offer more for rev. J guys. But, with AY that’s not relevant, too small and too Nordic/cheap biz model and F would never make sense for them/their markets.

BlueNordicSky

So many things went wrong last weekend, though some were more due to Finavia than AY.

- 2 flights out of 4, internet was down the whole flight. Somehow it seems like this has been happening more recently.
- 20 minutes to queue in the Plat line at HEL on Saturday morning, ridiculous. The line only seemed to get longer behind me. Halfway through the wait, one dragon just posted the "closed" sign on the counter and went away for several minutes. I barely made it in time for baggage drop-off cutoff.
- Speaking of which: Lost luggage. Lots of people in RVN were left standing there without their luggage at arrival when the carousel stopped. Someone from staff came over and told us to fill a report on the web, no service. No updates, no nothing, the entire day, until late in the evening I get a call saying my luggage has been found and they will deliver it.

Minor gripe: for the one and only time ever, I felt like having a bloody mary as aperitive. They couldn't provide as they were out of the mixer.

Antx

For most people, it is exciting when one finds out that "the next level" is attainable. Like when being young and able to buy the first car, rent the first apartment, buy the first house, etc. You have the energy to strive towards that goal, because you anticipate all the benefits that will make your life so much more fun. After reaching that level, it becomes one's new baseline, and no one really likes to downgrade from the baseline.

I would assume the reasoning with people being unhappy with any loyalty program is part of three different forces:

1. Fear of baseline inflation due to devaluation of the program or too many other people being awarded the same perks. If everyone is special, no one is special.
2. Unattainability or unavailability of next level. You are stuck in baseline, nowhere to go. Would love to be excited again.
3. Usefulness of your benefits. You don't need the perks, you can't use them or you actually would like have some other perks that would be more useful for you.

Now, numer one is directly related to the discussion of some people wanting levels less attainable. But if the levels are really high, the customer group will become biased. Very much so. And, while in theory it would be easier to cater for one special group of people, the 0.01%, that group will likely end up being the one group that you are unable to keep happy because of forces two and three.

Number two is in direct correlation with reaching new customers. You need new customers because there is unavoidable churn, especially with the 0.01% corporate customers. One day they are flying every week in paid J, the next day the company moves all business to the US and sacks everyone living in Europe. This is also important in building loyalty with people who fly with different rules, for example the unlucky 95% of business customers who need to fly in Y per corporate policy, or just private persons who need to fly economy on their own money. If there is a program that is only built for people flying LH in J, they won't feel attainable for the other customers.

Number three is something that is really subjective to each customer group. Some people find the benefits fine, some would like more. The longer you stay in one level, the more you a likely to want more. This is something that is really difficult to manage because of the subjective expectations. Depending on the perceived gap, it can cause loyalty to diminish over time. It would require active management to be able to keep things fresh for those people who have other (better) options. Still, if there is one benefit that is really good in the eyes of the customer, they might be happy with the level even if the other benefits are useless to them.

This. A company like AY, whose loyalty program is built around the diversity of customers, would effectively kill the program by going with revenue based tiers or if the levels are made very much more unattainable by cutting reaching levels by sectors or requiring 12 flights in J, or whatever that only works for the 0.01%. Yes, there are things to fix, but the smart way would be to fix for example the rewards/upgrade availability to give J-flyers (and obviously other top tier customers) more value from the points they get, and use other means to make lounges less crowded, instead than killing the program for everyone else but a small group of corporate flyers.

Many times when one is at the top, the fear of not being special makes it easy to say that we should make it more difficult to achieve the top. But it's only good for those persons already at the top, not for the bigger picture of a loyalty program.

TTL

Would not setting back (as they used to be higher earlier) the tier thresholds in points and flight numbers be the easiest solution. Instead of 76 flights or 150k tier points to plat, 100 or 200k to plat (and so forth for the G and S)? And 200 or 400k (solely in AY) for Lumo? Just looking at hcircle requirements with LH-group.

NoWindowSeat

Yeah, didn’t even remember that they actually lowered the segment limits a while back, thought Plat was still 92....well, that speaks for itself..

ffay005

A little more food for thought: AY has lately increased redemption options that require very little points. Pay for an extra bag, pay for seat selection, pay for a bread roll on board. Fly one evrery 18 months and your points will not expire.

Why? To attract infrequent flyers? To some extent, it seems to work, too. I have a coworker who is an infrequent flyer and always books light tickets. When she needs to take a bag, she happily pays for it with her points...

niksal

My opinion: stability is good, so I don’t want to change the thresholds. But what could be done? Guest privileges could be restricted at peak times. For instance today, the schengen lounge was really packed, and it looked like a lot of families of 4-5. I have two kids myself and appreciate the possibility to visit the lounge with my family when going on a holiday. But maybe the most popular holidays could be restricted to one or no guest?

kauppias

I rarely fly during peak holiday periods as I hate crowds however I do not like nor appreciate restrictions on earned benefits... drives me away from given loyalty programs to be honest.

now perhaps the only restriction I could see working would be to restrict charter flight pax from guesting but even that sucks. just build more lounge space 😁😁😁

intuition

I understand your point and hope you didn't feel I was attacking!
Yes, 'Loyalty perks to highest cabin flyers' is a real problem, because the loyalty program perks mostly just are the perks of a higher cabin. Upgrades, prio security, lounge and so on. All are perks taken from the next higher cabin. On a 2 cabin airline, this makes achieving a tier only meaningful for Y flyers.

Having a F cabin makes some of those perks working for J, but ofcourse the meaninglessness still exists for revenue F flyers. I am not sure any program have solved this problem, but at least some work to protect the value of their premium cabins. For example QR used to offer their flagship lounge only to revenue F flyers. They changed it a bit, and now offers flagship lounge also to top-tier members, but only when flying revenue J. So economy and upgraded tickets are not allowed regardless of your tier. I see this as a way to reserve some perks to class-of-service.

In general I think
a) don't give away all COS perks as tier perks. Keep some perks unique for your J/F ticket holder
b) instead create perks that are not part of a higher COS.



Points or segments, yes they are all just proxies of what the airline really want to target. Maybe one or the other isn't universally better to determine which customers are "the best". But add the goal of the program, then one or the other might prove the best. And that is where I've landed. Finnair has by action showed what customers are most important and thus tier points could be removed from the program.

I don't see revenue as universally a better proxy (revenue ≠ earnings) but I'm saving that for another post.