Speculation at how Emerald members are split across the alliance
 

Read a RTW trip report today and the guy was creditting his miles to IB's program and it made me wonder how the OW Emerald crowd are split up across the alliance.

My guesses are AA EXPs and BA Golds make up a fair chunk with QF Plats not far behind. Am aware that CX Diamonds are a pretty exclusive crowd along with those in AY, EI and IB.

I've been told that EI, AY and IB have fewer than 100 Emeralds each (rather doubt it for IB, but their plan is sufficiently quirky to discourage membership except for those living in MAD or BCN). LA is also quite low (probably under 1000). CX Diamond numbers were disclosed but I don't know if that is proprietary, however it is in the thousands. QF, BA and AA are in the tens of thousands (approaching 100K on the high end). So yes, there is roughly 3 orders of magnitude difference in number of Emeralds by OW airline. Sometimes this shows up in staff attitude, particularly at smaller airports where they may see one Emerald a month and think it is a VIP.

Fewer than 100 at some airlines :eek: Didn't think it'd be that low! If there are just a few hundred Emeralds at IB I wonder how many members there are of their invitation level, Club Fiesta :p

The "invitation level" is typically given for political/commercial reasons, and often to people who never fly on airlines (they use private jets). Most airlines have several thousand "invitation level" members, of which varying numbers actually fly the airline (probably BA and QF are the most active). Almost every long-haul QF flight that I've been on has at least one CL.

Can't believe <100 Emeralds for AY. Probably more from Nokia alone.

Unless they don't care about FF miles.

This makes me want to visit HEL and flash my EXP card... I'll be as big of a celebrity as Conan O'Brien :D

I doubt it too but it can't be many either. IME, with a lot of IB flights, two EXPs travelling in the same PNR causes a minor stir... and plenty of op-ups. Same situation with AA gets us nada de nada. So, the less IB Emeralds, the merrier for us.

Nah, HEL gate dragons see plenty of those from all of the consultants visiting Nokia. :p

They can fly SAS as well.

Unfortunately EXP seems to have a certain reputation (at least with AY and IB) and gets ignored a bit, while QF Platinum has more clout (more than BA Premier, rather perversely -- don't ask how I know this). Mostly a case of rarity, plus AY staff know of some marketing ventures with QF, so they react to seing QF Emeralds. In any case several times I've had trouble making some simple booking changes, and EXP was getting me nowhere, but flashing QF Plat brought a quick call for a supervisor and things suddenly became a lot smoother. Part of the strange world of Oneworld. But it is certainly true that many flights will have a single Emerald on the plane (vs. other routes, such as QF SYD-LAX, that has dozens of Emeralds on every flight).

I was at the AY lounge in ARN 3 months ago, and they have a separate "Platinum" (AY's Emerald level) section in this lounge which is accesed with a code. This was quite late in the evening with only one BA A319 and one AY EMB-170 left to depart that day. I saw AT LEAST 10 different people go into the Platinum Lounge (and I can't imagine that most of them were BA Golds), so I have to seriously doubt that AY has fewer than 100 Emeralds.

We were checking in for HEL-LHR in June, and at HEL there is a separate Emerald check in counter. The AY checkins that morning were horrendous - snaking lines etc.. The Emerald checkin had at least 10 pax/families in it - and most seemed Finnish.

But I don't think its fair to assume that your country of residence determines which airline you have your FF program with. hop over to the QF board and have a look at how many QF flyers are AAExp

Sure but FTers are hardly representative of all FFP members, or even of just elites (thankfully since less competition for the best benefits).

Very true, but for people who are at emerald status they would probably spend even a small amount of time working out what program will best suit there needs. I am not familiar with AY's program but I would assume if there are so few it has some disadvantage to it that makes people move over to BA/AA

I doubt this very much. Remember the typical high status member is someone who travels a lot for business. Many simply don't have the time or inclination to check out all the options. Some would be unaware there are other options.

I moved to AA due to 100% PLT/EXP bonus and easier to reach tier levels. The fact that cheap AY tickets get 50% points at AY but 100% miles at AA helped as well.

When Finnair joined 1W there was in the news reports of first people reaching Emerald already a few months after the big change. My boss said he would have reached AY Platinum if not for the unfortunate timing of membership year change and reset of all counters. And he was very far from "high level management".

I very much doubt that AY's Platinum is in the range of 100.

The Emerald Line also allows AY's Golds in, which is sometimes why it is easer just to do the business class checkin counters. You are right on the other point, AY Y checkin is typically disasterous.

And if they are sane they deposit the miles to another OW program instead of Finnair Plus.

The thing is that AY's Plat recognition is supposedly really, really good, so if you are, for example, interested in making the huge amount of on-business travel you do with them more bearable (in the form of upgrades and general preferential treatment), then it might easily be more "sane" to go for AY instead of another program that might give you a better bang for the buck in the miles department.

Is there a single AY top-tier member on FT? It would be nice to hear whether these informal benefits materialize ... I´ve heard both good and bad about the AY and IB programs, but never did manage to find out. The only program that I know for sure has special informal benefits that may be worthwhile is CX Diamond (good thing too, as the official program is poor, but they seem to sweeten it just enough unofficially).

LAN Comodoros get some very interesting unpublished perks. I know that for a fact, although I prefer not to say more than that.

Do tell..... Don't throw that comment out and keep us hanging. :)

I know a few AY Plat fellows and they seem to enjoy flying with AY. Preferential treament in general, skiing trips (Finnair hosts a major event in the spring), gifts (e.g. aluminium flying case, Suunto-watch or B&O phone), etc. Some of the advantages are not offered to foreign AY Plat's. If you travel a lot for business, either a lot of shorthaul trips or longhaul in business class, becoming AY Plat is not that difficult. I don't know if the rules have changed since but at one point you could become AY Plat with just domestic flights (HEL-OUL-HEL is a busy route).

As I'm personally not flying a lot for business, just vacations and short holidays, I'm now preferring BAEC as you can maintain BA Silver relatively easily and it does all I need -- business class check-in and occasional lounge access. The only drawback is that it was much easier to use AY miles than BA miles.

Interesting comment - why is that?

I suspect all the benefits are oriented strictly to those living in Spain (or more accurately, Madrid). I know nothing about the unpublished benefits, but I remember that one of the published benefits was free preferential parking at MAD airport, with valet service and things like free car wash. Rather interestingly LH also offers something like that, but at their HON level (earned status that is roughly BA Premier equivalent, quite a bit harder to get than Emerald). QF used to send 6 bottles of wine for Christmas presents, but that was a few years ago. Maybe IB is sending some iberico ham.

Do you think? 150,000 LH miles a year outside Germany gives status for 2 years. Don't forget that J earns 2x and F 3x towards status miles.

Also as BA Premier (as well as CX Invitation and QF Chairmans Lounge) are invitation only and as such I don't think it can be compared.

Some of those benefits are Iberia benefits, available in Madrid, Barcelona and Santiago (Chile) to Iberia full fare J passengers and/or top tier IberiaPlus members. My post was about LAN.

Your probably right KF maybe its just me but I always read about anything I'm getting involved in.

When I got my AY Plat card (personally delivered by an AY account manager), I had a one hour chat with him. He told that with the growing Chinese market there even starts to be some Chinese AY Plat card holders.

I've been rather pleased with AY Plat, especially on long-haul MD-11, where an upgrade to full J class or J class with Y class service is almost always guaranteed. This upgrading policy was confirmed to me by the AY account manager. Also it feels rather nice to have an account manager at AY, who encouraged me to be in contact with him, if there's any problems. He helped me for example earlier this year by checking if my flight would have the new J seats. Also the welcoming gift certificate for a pair of taylor made shoes was also a nice gift (my best shoes ever).

However some of my colleagues have signed up for the AA Plat challenge and leaving AY Plus.

I've always thought that for at least upgrade reasons one should always join the program on the airline that they fly the most.

It's funny that merely discussing LAN Comodoro unpublished benefits could jeopardize their existance!

Obviously, everything depends on the flying patterns.

I fly mostly transatlantic J, so my "how many flights do I need to become Emerald?" comparison would be like follows (assuming an average 10k miles per round trip):

BA Ex.Club:
800 points needed (not UK-Ireland based) / 240 points per round trip = 3.33 R.T. (I know for UK/USA it is much harder).

AAdvantage:
100,000 points needed / (10,000 x 1,5) = 6.66 Round Trips

IB+:
6,500 points needed / 800 (points R.T. average) = 8.12 Round Trips


So, who cares about IB+? :cool:

That's a starting point; but if that airline upgrades its elites <1% of the time, you may reconsider it...

HON is 150K miles per year now? Wow, when I looked at it is was something like 600K miles over 2 years, so even in F it was 100K flown miles per year (or monthly trans-Atlantic in F on LH). I don´t track LH too closely as I only fly them when it is convenient, but LH has really improved in the past couple of years and HON does seem to be a ¨better than Emerald¨ status that is attainable. Even for SEN LH has been very obliging in the past (more than Emerald).

Flying these past 3 weeks has been such a hassle, though, that I´m seriously considering cutting back and just not flying.

Probably not <100. But there can't be that many of them either as 300000 miles or whatever the limit is really isn't achievable by anyone else but frequent, long haul business class travellers. I know exactly one person.

Everyone else in Finland, including me, who have mainly short haul business trips are actually BA FF:s. I can easily maintain my emerald status with BA gold. (LHR-CAI-LHR once a year in F, 360 points, ka-ching). On AY I probably wouldn't even be able to get their gold card making me a disgraceful ruby basically without any lounge access. I wouldn't even dream of a platinum card with a couple of short haul business trips and an AONE3 a year.

So the Arlanda emerald lounge people are probably 90% BA gold members.

/hv

I thought the Finnair points were based on kilometers, and business class counted double, and first class triple, so ~62500 miles in F, or ~94000 in J earns Platinum. And most shorthaul earns more points than the actual km (Finland to Scandinavia 1500, to Germany 2000, x2 in J) right?.

The only thing with *A is that there seems to be an awful lot of *G, so much so that at check-in *G seems to be as long as the Y lines sometimes. OW seems to really have a tiered structure. which seems to have better benefits for people flying on airlines within the alliance other than their own "home" airline. So if you are flying LH as the majority of your travel then as a HON you will be looked after well but you would only be *G on any other *A carriers. In the last year I have flown on all but IB and EI of the OW carriers and I find OW to be a more seamless alliance. Just my $0.02 :)

My partner and I are both EXP; we travel together very frequently; never, on any OW flight (including IB), have we ever received an op-up or any other kind of special attention, even with paid first or business class tickets in hand.

You want an op-up from a paid first class ticket ? :confused: ;)