ulyparis

What is the future of the *Gold status? Now with AC you can only get the *Gold status if you fly 50% of the required 50 000 miles with AC as per http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/air-c...de-2015-a.html

If the AC rule is generalized (we can presume AC did not introduce it without consulting with Star), suppose one fly 10 000 miles on each of 10 different Star airlines for a total of 100 000 miles in a year; according to the new AC rules (which may generalize eventually) that person will not get any * status!

One way to prevent that would be for Star to grant gold status to those passengers rejected by the 10 airlines because they did not fly enough miles on any of them but has flown at least a minimum of x miles in a given year in total on Star.

mahasamatman

I seriously doubt AC consulted with anyone on this. It's just their own modification of United's requirement to fly four segments on United metal.

ulyparis

With AC now you will need 25 segments! Which is 6.25 times the UA requirement...

mahasamatman

And both requirements are infinitely higher than other airlines with no minimum. Every airline is pretty free to choose how to run its own program (as evidenced by how much the vary) as long as they meet some (what I expect are pretty minimal) requirements from Star Alliance.

ulyparis

It would be interesting indeed to know what is the minimum requirements from Star. With 26 members, if all of them require 50% mileage to be eligible to *Gold in their program, it is obviously a problem. It is not like if there would be only 5 members...

sbm12

This is a very bad assumption to make. Similar rules exist on programs around the world. AC might have the highest requirement for "home" metal flights but they are far from the only carrier to have such a requirement.

Q54701

what exactly is meant by AC metal or United metal? what if it's a AC ticket on a United codeshare?

steveman518

In *A what matters is what airline is flying the plane (the metal). Codeshares and whatnot don't particularly matter (unless you are a UA member in the US)

emcampbe

That's a BIG if. I highly doubt it will be generalized. All carriers set their own rules for earning status (which in turn, maps to a * level). This is why even within *, there are differing thresholds - status on some are easier to get and others are more difficult. Given member airlines work in different regions, have customers with different preferences and have different strategies for the way they think they can earn the most $ (which include FF benefits/rewards and incentives to keep customers coming back), it doesn't make sense to think that the same rules will work for all carriers.

Actually, it's the other way around. Before any of the US carriers added minimums, including UA, AC did. While it was just raised quite a bit, they have had a requirement for a few years now, maybe 5 or 6, but IIRC, at least when it started, it was 5 segments or a mile requirement (maybe 10,000?).

dvs7310

NH has exactly the same requirement and is the only reason I've not chased NH Platinum status for a year to get the Superflyers Credit Card. I typically only fly maybe 5-15,000 miles a year on NH metal and some of that is on UA Coded flights.

sbm12

Code shouldn't matter in *A; operator does.

Baldpacker

I was under the impression that flights had to be AC code and AC metal to qualify as Status AQM under Altitude. Can anyone confirm for certain? I'm searching the Altitude site now...

Edit: From the website for 2014 (massively increase for 2015 per the OP) "As part of the number of AQM or AQS required in order to reach Air Canada Altitude status, you'll need to earn at least 10,000 AQM or 5 AQS on eligible flights operated by Air Canada, Air Canada Express or Air Canada rouge."

Looks like others were correct and the code doesn't matter, only the "metal".

PLeblond

I think this will expand to some *A carriers and not others. For things like lounge access (when flying in Y) for *G, its the carrier that issues the status that gets billed from the airline operating the lounge. For example if I go into an LH lounge with an Aeroplan *G card (on a Y ticket on LH, or LX or TK etc) then AC gets billed for my use of the lounge but did not receive any of the revenue from my ticket (assuming non codeshare operating on non AC metal).

An airline like UA probably bills more from other *A carriers into its lounges than it gets billed from them, so for UA its not a big issue. Smaller carriers without a large international footprint are probably more affected by this.

I will say that with the recent changes at A3, now AC, we will see other following this lead.

ulyparis

Air Canada just sent a message to its FT members that the requirement will be 25% travel on AC metal (instead of 50%) for Non Canadian Residents

Strange that they did not think of this before announcing the new requirements...