SK2751

When recently AB went belly up, there were very few meager match offers, mostly limited to German residents. I suspect that most status holders lost it. There was no lifetime program in AB, but LT does not make it any more attractive for competitors to take over the customer base.

On the transported pax numbers, AB was marginally larger than SK, and it was the only OW carrier heavily operating in Germany and surrounding countries. Many people hoped that there will be interest in this legacy. We got easyJet instead... My hopes are not very high.

Koru Flyer

Sabena, Swiss Air, Ansett, Air Berlin and would Span Air also be in that bunch. All reasonable mainstream carriers that went bust rather than say the likes of Monarch etc.

Many people with AN had lifetime status as it was sold by the airline (Goldwings Club), and other than a status match that was about all their received. Lifetime status lost, miles lost, and I believe also there were many issues with people who had AN issues tickets on other carriers which were no longer honoured.

Acquisition such as Swiss, Brussels, BMI etc at leats had mileage intact but lifetime status was lost.

The other one is that SK is in *A, who knows if they will stay other airlines have come and left alliances. Also SK gold is for life, but it the benefits are not for life. Easy for SK to redefine what Gold is, for example Silver, Gold, Diamond becomes Gold, Diamond, Platinum :-)

KF

FlyerTalker70

I wouldn't consider Air Berlin nor Span Air to be legacies - both airlines were younger than me and I'm a spring chicken in the span of global airlines. Sabena never went bust, they were acquired by SwissAir which went bust so that doesn't count either. Ansett you may have an argument given how long they were in business. The only other ones I could think of was Varig (one of the original members of Star that has been around for a while) and Canadian Airlines (founding member of OneWorld, later merged into Air Canada). My understanding of the latter was that whilst they didn't have a lifetime status, miles and status were transferred over to Aeroplan at a 1 to 1 rate so no loss there (arguably).

Ofcourse we could then go into the various mergers overtime Delta of Northwest, United of Continental and most recently American of US Air. In all three cases, things were transferred over smoothly with the case of United's merger of Continental that lifetime status was also maintained.

In any event, a case could be made for diversifying your status overtime to ensure you're protected against these things (i.e. getting lifetime on SK and OZ as well as say BA for OW coverage which is increasingly possible thanks to discount INTL F fares).

Safe Travels,

James

GUWonder

FlyerTalker70

...but is there a real risk that SK will go belly up? I always thought the Scandinavians were as robust as the Swiss...wait a minute!

-James

fassy

True, I'm expecting it to happen sooner rather than later. And probably LH stepping in as well....

Nick Art

DId I miss something? Because as far as I know SAS is rather stable currently, I'd even go as far and say they are doing pretty ok.

Swissair was doing really bad in the years prior to its grounding and the actual financial situation was long not reported to the board, while still following a really stupid expansion strategy (while also being excluded from the european economic area). Furthermore there were a lot of other reasons, some of them really unfortunate and unlucky, for its ultimate demise, as sad as it is.

AlicorporateUK

Wait for the fuel price to soar even slightly (2 names drawn from the hat: SAS & even LOT which, funnily enough, are also amongst the few legacy carriers in Europe not involved in any joint-venture... Hmmm).

G

oliver2002

SAS was in deep troubles some time ago and was only saved by falling oil prices. The underlying problems have not been resolved (wages for SE/DK crews, pilots, etc) and SAS is one crisis away from being in turbulent weather again.

LH Group nowadays doesn't integrate new aquisitions like they did with Swiss, instead the model offered to interested parties is to be like SN with an underlying EW operating platform. So crew and aircraft would be employed/owned by EW and the face to the customer branded with whatever legacy front is required.

FFPs are nowadays only valued for their customer database and the associations they have with various banks and consumer product companies. Any liabilities like lifetime stuff is usually shed in acquisitions.

FlyingMoose

I struggle with life time status being perceived as a liability. There is no risk if a frequent flyer doesn't fly anymore and with it being so easy to reach Gold, most folks that do keep flying their lifetime status carrier would likely naturally obtain the status. Worst case they credit it to another *A program but that's covered in the fare.

CPH-Flyer

The context of liability was for a carrier taking over SK; should e.g. Lufthansa take over SK if they went out of business a lifetime status obligation built by SK would be a liability for LH and M&M. Especially if people then use the now Lufthansa status to obtain gold services while crediting to other programs M&M would bear the costs of lounge access, the other programs would get the income from the mileage accrual.
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another_shot

I have no illusions about lifetime gold to survive a merger or bankruptcy. But what really makes me wonder there is no small print at all attached to the notification about lifetime gold achievement... No definitions, no guarantee, no promise. So there are no obligations really, SK can cancel or reverse it any day...

FlyingMoose

I realise what was implied, I just don't agree with it. If LH was to buy SK and M&M would supersede EB which I would call unlikely at best, there is very little non-LH *A left to fly in Europe other than a handful of very specific routes. LH wouldn't charge between its subsidiaries for any lounge use or cost due to status benefits. Yes there is A3 and TK but really only worthwhile if you fly to Greece or Turkey or need a dump fare to some developing country. I also can't see why any significant number of people would credit to a different *A program when you have lifetime status to begin with, having two lifetime statuses from the same alliance really doesn't help you.

The only liability I see when you give people lifetime status is that the portion that was only flying to get to the lifetime status goes away and it hits your revenue. If you are bad at being an airline, like SK, then you could have people walk out and probably not even look at *A alternatives but other alliances instead.

The revenue from very frequent flyers greatly outweighs the minimal cost you get from the occasional external lounge usage. You just need to position your product in such a way that you retain those very frequent flyers. Or especially not set a course where you proactively try to discourage those very frequent flyers from using your airline, like SK is doing.

Nick Art

I was wondering that if I buy a few hundred missing basic points with extra points to achieve gold status, if that year would count towards the ten years of gold I need to achieve to receive lifetime gold status. I took the question to the sas chat (that i didn't even know existed before) and the matter was solved quite promptly.

Yes it does count as seen in the following picture of the chat:


I hope this helps at least a few other wondering souls here

ksu

When Swissair went bankrupt, didn't Crossair take over the routes, before switching names to Swiss? The current Swiss code is LX (AFAIR Crossair's old code), not SR (Swissair's code).

I'm not too sure about your comment about the current value of Deutschmarks. Except for banknotes issued in/before 1948, DM notes and coins can be freely exchanged into Euros, at the same rate as at the switch from DM to Euro: DM have exactly the same nominal value now (1 Euro is 1,95583 DM) as at the time of the switch in 2002.

https://www.bundesbank.de/de/aufgabe...in-euro-599338