Consolidated "Soft Landings" for 2009 Thread
 

Because of the merger, Mrs. Exleftseat and I stopped flying NW and switched our business to other carriers last year. Today we have noticed that she ( long time PE ) with 0 miles in 2008 has been downgraded to Silver, and I with 20K have been downgraded to GE. Seems they still are doing "soft landings". Thought I should pass this on to the community.

Just over 25k and was dropped 1 level to Gold myself.

Cool, thanks for sharing!

NW status adjustments (tied to 2008 activity) happen before the end of February? No, it's just that -- if looking at account details on nwa.com -- an indication of upcoming member status .... effective from 01Mar2009 ... is now viewable on nwa.com.

Unlike with some airlines, there is no automatic soft-landing for all NW elites. For example -- after having reviewed the first two accounts in my possession that were not mine -- I noticed that the two NW Gold accounts I reviewed that had zero EQMs last year are to be dropped to general Worldperks members effective March 1, 2009.

You are right that in the past, status for the upcoming FF year was updated just before the end of February. I went and looked accounts of my wife and my children. They had zero EQMs for 2008. THey have dropped from PE to SE.

Interesting -- there seems to be some kind of criteria that has Plats with zero EQMs in 2008 drop two status levels (i.e., to Silver) and that has those Plats with some EQMs in 2008 to drop one status level (i.e., to Gold).

I am now left wondering if there are any Golds with zero EQMs in 2008 who were dropped to Silver or if there are any Golds with some (substantially sub-25k) EQMs in 2008 who were dropped one status level (i.e., to Silver).

It does appear that Plats with some EQMs dropped only one level while those with zero EQMs dropped two levels. It would be interesting to find out about experience of GEs.

Shouldn't the status be dropped as of Mar 1 and not now? :confused:

My wife fell just short of qualifying for silver (+/- 24,500 miles). I just checked her account and it is showing SE through February 2010.

I am gold this year and only flew approx 8K eqm miles. I am showing as Silver beginning March 1st. I don't think it is related to my Million Air status but it could be.

I am plat for 2008 but only managed to get 32K EQM and 28 segments last year. This morning I am showing up as gold for 3/1/09-2/28/10. Thanks for the soft landing NW. ^

FWIW, much of my flying was expensive RJ flights from the H bucket with a B or two thrown in.

That's a big policy change. I was plat in 2007, flew only about 15k EQMs and was knocked down to dirt in 2008.

I wonder if this is NW's "give" for not offering 2xEQM in the spring...trying to equal the playing field with the DL guys and gals a little bit.

just a thought...

My GE to SE experience
 

I had this posted on an earlier thread by Yaatri Softlanding or Crash, related to my personal “soft landing” experience:

I’m really happy that NWA “threw me a bone” with a SE gift. Considering the economy, especially locally here in SE Michigan, I don’t know if and how much I may travel for work this year. However, you can bet I’ll do everything in my power to ensure it’s on NWA or DL metal if I do.

Exactly the same idea I’ve mulled over. That, and the present “Great Recession” with plummeting business travel, has likely dropped WP-SM elite loads to the point where NWA feels confident being a bit more generous – really, anything to entice us to fly DL-NW if the opportunity presents itself.

Here in the TOL-DTW-FNT-MBS corridor, a good majority of business travel is auto-related, and no ‘discretionary, non-client-facing travel’ rules are in effect. Even in my company, a Fortune-50 technology firm with over 300K employees globally, I don’t work on a manufacturing account yet the same rules are in effect for us across the board.

If this sort of brakes have been put on a good portion of corporate travel, and consumer gloom has likewise dampened demand for leisure travel I think DL-NW is considering anything to provide incentives wherever they can. Hopefully things will begin to ease up a bit soon – it’s really hard to remain effective when you can only collaborate with remote colleagues via teleconference.

01Mar2009-28Feb2010: Gold Elite
2008 Elite Qualifying Miles: 33k+ (basically spent the year cashing in NW miles for routes where I could use them for intl biz awards)

:D

I'm still going to CO, but it's nice to have the soft landing status in my back pocket. (Also, now I'll perhaps be able to status match as a Gold with CO...)

peace,
~Ben~