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History of the status component of frequent flyer programs?

History of the status component of frequent flyer programs?

Old Sep 13, 2015, 2:15 pm
  #16  
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Originally Posted by Kagehitokiri
there must be threads on this

financial statements / annual reports may track some of the history ?
FFP details in SEC filings have always been rather thin on this aspect. Even the redacted/non-publicly-disseminated elements of airline business dealings have been thin on this aspect.
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Old Sep 13, 2015, 3:59 pm
  #17  
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are any of the spun off FFPs public companies?
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Old Sep 13, 2015, 4:07 pm
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Delta had Flying Colonel and Flying Orchid (the latter for women) going back to the 1940s (if not earlier).

Pan Am gave me Platinum status in the late 80s/early 90s (before succumbing to deregulation) when I was going back and forth to school in Munich from New York.

It would be great if we could establish a timeline of different status levels at different airlines from this thread.^
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Old Sep 13, 2015, 5:30 pm
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Originally Posted by jspira
Delta had Flying Colonel and Flying Orchid (the latter for women) going back to the 1940s (if not earlier)...
Delta gave me Flying Colonel in the late 1980s. By then it had been devalued a great deal. I got a nice wood plaque for my wall and that was about it. Lifetime Crown Room access (what they called SkyClub back then) had been eliminated. About the only thing the card was good for was using the fast security line, before I regained Delta status by flying in the last few years and got TSA pre-check anyhow. Then I lost the card, along with my then Silver Medallion ID, hurrying to catch a flight at MSP. Asked DL for replacements. Got a new Silver Medallion card, replaced soon after by a Gold Medallion card, but no FC card. Oh, well.
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Old Sep 14, 2015, 12:38 am
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For those interested in how United's Premier 1K got its name, it all goes back to I think the mid 90s or so, when MileagePlus only had Premier and Premier Executive (equivalent to today's Premier Silver and Gold). At some point, someone at United felt that 100,000 mile Premier Executive flyers should have some extra special recognition over regular Premier Executive flyers. Thus, the new level was called "Premier Executive 100K". The question was, how to code it in United's system, as the system can only take two characters. Premier was coded as "2P" and Premier Executive was coded as "1P". Thus, Premier Executive 100K became coded as "1K" and soon, the new tier eventually became known as "Premier 1K".

When the CO merger happened, Premier and Premier Executive became Premier Silver and Gold, and a new 75K level was added called Premier Platinum, and the 1K name carried over. United kept the "Premier" and the "1K" and Continental brought over their precious metal names. United kept the "MileagePlus" name, Continental brought over the FF number format and website. I guess it was a merger of "equals".
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