Motion Passed: Create a Avianca/Taca Lifemiles Forum
Sep 19, 2012, 8:41 am
#46
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I would agree with Jenbel and caution against making too quick a parallel with bmi. Yes, there were quite a few members of the bmi programme who never flew bmi or even set foot in a country in which bmi flew. However, if you look at the bmi forum, you will quickly realise that the overwhelming majority of posts were by flyers who flew or used to fly the airline quite regularly and that most of them were UK or Ireland-based. Take that constituency away and the bmi forum would have been moribund.
The jury is out on an Avianca board, imo. Sure, there is a significant interest right now. Whether it will perdure a year or two down the line remains to be seen. However, given that the creation of the Aegean forum was approved (and there is precious little interest in Aegean as an airline itself and the forum raison d'etre is surely the perception of M&B as a refugee camp for ex-bmi FFers, pretty much like LM), the creation of a new LM forum seems difficult to reject: even if we ignore the *A issue, there is bound to be more interest in Avianca/Taca than in Aegean, if only given the strong North American bias of FT and the fact that North Americans are more likely to be interested in a medium-size South American airline than a small Greek one.
The jury is out on an Avianca board, imo. Sure, there is a significant interest right now. Whether it will perdure a year or two down the line remains to be seen. However, given that the creation of the Aegean forum was approved (and there is precious little interest in Aegean as an airline itself and the forum raison d'etre is surely the perception of M&B as a refugee camp for ex-bmi FFers, pretty much like LM), the creation of a new LM forum seems difficult to reject: even if we ignore the *A issue, there is bound to be more interest in Avianca/Taca than in Aegean, if only given the strong North American bias of FT and the fact that North Americans are more likely to be interested in a medium-size South American airline than a small Greek one.
Sep 19, 2012, 1:02 pm
#47
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Rather than comparing Lifemiles to BMI, why not compare it to Aegean? Most of the posts are about the mileage program and not actually flying it. It's not as active as other boards ... the bottom of the first page has a thread where the last post was a month ago.
Sep 19, 2012, 7:11 pm
#48
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Thanks for the update and I wish the new board well. ^
Sep 19, 2012, 7:30 pm
#49
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There are a whopping 212 of us Brits legally living in Colombia and carrying foreigner ID cards. There are 2495 Americans too.
There are also a bucketload of Canadians down here working in the mining industry and the USA diplomatic mission to Colombia is the second largest in the world (after Iraq) Not forgetting of course that there are a bunch of folks from the DEA here too (but they tend to come on their own aeroplane which doesn't accumulate miles.)
I doubt that a LifeMiles forum will be as busy as the BMI forum, but I see no reason why it wouldn't eventually be as busy as the LANPASS forum, which anyone would agree has flourished and is courteous and nicely behaved and never leaves the toilet seat up.
When we lobbied for LANPASS, Eastbay1K commented (I think it was him) that there wasn't a single airline represented on FT from south of the US-Mexico border. Well now we have LAN which gives half of South America.
Adding Avianca Taca gives us a big slice of Central America too. Plus Taca Peru bolsters the growing Peru forum. It's a big important hub in case anyone is in any doubt, in fact so is Bogotá.
Sep 20, 2012, 1:36 am
#50
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Aegean and Air Berlin are prime examples of 'Let set up a forum for this Airline/FFP its going to be great!!!' there is some initial hype, a flurry of threads, and then pffffft....
Sep 21, 2012, 9:53 am
#51
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In the grand BMI tradition, the Lifemiles forum will transcend other forums which are just about flying the base airline. For those who used the BMI forum in the past, were able to gain valuable information to master their system and thus "game the Star system".
Personally while I liked the BMI FF program, I never got a chance to fly the airline. I wanted to but it did not fly where I needed to go (thus I had to fly BA) and this may be the case for many members in Europe. Those of us in the Americas will be able to fly throughout Latin & South America.
Unlike BMI you will need to fly base miles on Avianca/Taca to have the higher tiered cards, which seems a reasonable requirement.
The Lifemiles program is new for the merger of the two airlines, so there should be much to see in the future. My prediction is that this new Flyertalk forum will have the same usage as the BMI one that is soon to be rolled up with BA.
Personally while I liked the BMI FF program, I never got a chance to fly the airline. I wanted to but it did not fly where I needed to go (thus I had to fly BA) and this may be the case for many members in Europe. Those of us in the Americas will be able to fly throughout Latin & South America.
Unlike BMI you will need to fly base miles on Avianca/Taca to have the higher tiered cards, which seems a reasonable requirement.
The Lifemiles program is new for the merger of the two airlines, so there should be much to see in the future. My prediction is that this new Flyertalk forum will have the same usage as the BMI one that is soon to be rolled up with BA.
I obviously support this motion
GBM
Sep 21, 2012, 11:59 am
#52
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I second the motion to create the AV TA Forum
Sep 21, 2012, 4:04 pm
#53
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yes to seperate forum
Sep 21, 2012, 8:26 pm
#54
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Useful to have a separate forum for this forum since with their purchase miles option makes redeeming cheaper for AC redeeming than redeeming with aeroplan.
Sep 21, 2012, 10:11 pm
#55
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I second the motion to create the Lifemiles Forum.
Sep 22, 2012, 6:34 pm
#56
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Yes to a separate forum, please. And Yes to "Yes, I also actually fly them", having just done another SFO-SAL-LIM-MVD on TA yesterday, as well as using them now as my primary *A program.
Sep 22, 2012, 10:55 pm
#57
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Make total sense given that they're the second biggest air group in Central/South America.
Sep 24, 2012, 9:40 am
#58
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Motion Passed...
On September 24, 2012, Talkboard passed 9-0:
"Talkboard recommends the creation of a Avianca/Taca LifeMiles Forum."
Voting Yes: bhatnasx, Cholula, goalie, jackal, kokonutz, nsx, RichMSN, SkiAdcock, Spiff
"Talkboard recommends the creation of a Avianca/Taca LifeMiles Forum."
Voting Yes: bhatnasx, Cholula, goalie, jackal, kokonutz, nsx, RichMSN, SkiAdcock, Spiff
Sep 24, 2012, 10:00 am
#59
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Sep 24, 2012, 7:00 pm
#60
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