flysurfer

Kewl! So they managed to be fair and populist at the same time. ^

But seriously, I watched the segment online, and it's totally one-sided and skews the facts.

rorschi

Yes, these "casual flyers" are exactly the kind of passengers who fly twice a year to Mallorca, think that they have purchased the whole plane with their 199CHF-ticket and are angry that no champagne is served in Economy. And when they don't get an award-seat for going to their congress, they cry and set up a community of interests...
The bad thing is that Kassensturz is populist. I'm still expecting a phone-call from my father who will tell me that he has seen on the TV what kind of swindle my mileage-program is...

But what is really turning me angry: I try to get an award-seat for the first morning-flight ZRH-MUC next Monday, but there is no space available

flysurfer

So I guess it's time for you to join Miles&Less.
And don't forget to send a letter to the TV show, stating your failure of securing an award seat. After all, they asked for that at the end of the segment, right? I guess they want to produce a follow-up.

blue-sky

Slightly off topic: Travelclub had (sometimes) different award availability for Baisc/Silver/Gold member. Does M&M have something similar?

It think it is true that for certain routes it is harder to get the award seat you want, but lucky me, until now i always manage to arrange something.

flysurfer

Sure, HONs have no award restrictions at all in Y and C and usually clear in F.

SENs, FTLs and General Members get to take the seats the HONs don't want.

rorschi

Officially, they have an other award-availability for HON's and once per year for SEN's (for the double amount of miles).

But as with STC in the past, they sometimes open the inventory of O/I/X-class for an elite-member. One of these "M&L-Casual-Flyers" told that his miles expire after 3 years. Amazing, how a blue-card-member feels entitled to claim

BTW: I booked yesterday an award-seat to GRU for my favourite dates in 4 weeks in I. Not with LX, but with LH.

rorschi

There is also the opportunity to write (and read) the personal opinions. I guess some more postive feedbacks could be useful

alex0683de

The tabloid 20 Minuten picked up the story today as well. Their take on it can be found here:

http://www.20min.ch/tools/suchen/story/12459499

I find this quote strange:

"Im letzten Jahr setzten Fluggäste aus der Schweiz und Liechtenstein 480 000 Flugmeilen ein, 85 Prozent der 2006 angehäuften Meilen."

Has to be a typo or something. They probably wanted to say that 480'000 award tickets were claimed last year. Still, I find the figure of 85% somewhat high.

behuman

^ ^ 100 %. The worse if I think about the money that arrogant doctor "Kieferchirurg" or what the hell is earning (from our health care system).

In my experience awards on short haul are readily available especially with the "Smart Fly" option. Long haul the best is to try 7 days ahead. I got nice F awards that way.

Try the second flight or Tuesday ,

FLYGVA

I will never understand, they trying to get an Award in Y (and probably pay the taxes which could be a third of the flight fare or even higher like the latest poster from Hofstetten on the board on sf.tv pointed out) and happy. At least to me, there is not much of a difference betw. an award in Y and to buy a trolley or watch with the miles. They have (thank god) no clue about how to redeem the miles the right way. And like rorschi pointed out, have this attitude of wanting to get everything because they have the miles and not everybody should care about them. They must be a difference between them and us

And at least the first two person like to travel in peak time - award availability in Y in peak time is in every program low.

One positive thing, they will not compete for awards with us, if they leave M&M

airoli

Shhhhh! I saw some FTers comment on that SF Kassensturz board (it was quite easy to recognize based on the more skiled language and abbreviations used). Must you really give those whiners all the info on how to redeem sensible M&M awards?

Seriously though, I can understand to a certain extent why amateurs might be a bit disappointed by the "low" availability and bad value proposition for discount Eco earning vs. Eco spending. On the other hand though, the journalists should have made the effort to be a bit more balanced, i.e. in highlighting that the same people who are now complaining were the ones that kept asking for lower Y prices instead of service, miles etc. to begin with. If they now exclaim that they "will only fly easyJet in the future", then that's a point in case.

That really annoyed me too. "Big pharma is paying for my C flights across the pond, and they also throw in an extra hotel room for the weekend in Miami if I want to bring my kids. And now I can't even redeem my miles to fly them over!!" Well, if we raise health insurance premiums a bit more, I am sure big pharma will also be able to buy tickets for doctor's kids in the future. (Sorry verve! )

Frequent_Flyer1

LOL!!! But at least verve knows how to redeem awards, that's the difference...

verve

I'm dissapointed that I all the educative efforts at our Do's seemed to be pointless.
Actually, with all the new regulations in place, we're not allowed anymore to take our customers on the nice trips - which led us to decission to take the nice trips ourselfs

rorschi

I'm not sure whether it's OK to publish real phone-numbers and a link to the flyertalk Coop-Discussion on that Kassensturz-Board...

verve

Anyway I hope they will delete that entry asap from their Forum.