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Just a thought for the airlines that in these rough economic times maybe they should relax the rules on points & miles and keep flyers on the same tier when their points expire in 2009, a little bit of loyalty now might go a long way when things pick-up, and i speak as one who once turned left or went up the stairs and now turns right and sits down at the back.
I would advocate forgetting loyalty to one airline or indeed a GOLD card. British Airways gives no value what so ever to loyalty - I speak following a disgraceful catalogue of woes. BA does not care one jot about loyal customers. One day soon I hope BA appreciates loyalty, the alternative is they go bust because they are driving passengers away.
I couldn't agree more...
Whilst I travel pretty much exclusively with BA, I'm yet to make Gold. I usually get to Silver, but never beyond.
We spend around £400,000 with BA every year as I organise national and international events for our company. Our team decides who we fly with. What loyalty does our team get for that spend? Yup, naff all. Nothing but the usual 'computer says no' response to pretty much everything.
They really do need someone decent on the management team to sort their customer service.
I really do believe that curent threshold levels should be maintained as this does enable the provider to give continual rewards to customers who consistently travel and spend. Yes times may be difficultt, but it the threshold levels are left open then the higher tiers will be flooded. Last year EK reviewed its gold threshold level to maintain Gold, which has resulted in less gold memebers, but at least this does mean that you get a gold service when you are rightly in gold. I also question the true benefit of maintaining a loyalty to a particular airline when travelling frequently, as deals are so good in all cabins that it may not be worth collecting the miles for use later. As a gold memeber is a few airlines the real benift for me is collecting the miles/points for free upgrades or seats. Lounges and free transfers already come with the ticket.
Henryp1.
I would tend to agree, if the playing fields were level. It is clear, however, that the airlines change the rules to suit themselves. You do not need 1500 BA tier points for gold if you live in Sweden, say.. 800 will do there..,
So why should we not lobby them to change them to suit us from time to time.
Its all about incentive.
For the UK based traveller, its logical to use BA as it is the national carrier and thus the most convenient way to get from A to B.
However, for non-UK based travellers, BA wants to incentivise these travellers to become BA FFs. Non-UK based travellers would generally tend to use their national carriers - a Paris traveller would use Air France, an Amsterdam traveller KLM, a Munich traveller Lufthansa, a Oslo traveller SAS, and so on and so forth.
I am sure if we investigated further and found out how many points a Scandinavian traveller would need for SAS and compared it to what a UK based traveller would need, I am sure you'd find that the situation is the same for the Scandinavian-based traveller.
This is obviously a massive advantage for non-UK based travellers as the business class product on BA is head and shoulders above the rest of the European carriers, and leave the British traveller at a massive disadvantage - but c'est la vie, n'est pas?
Happy travelling...
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