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As a relatively new CO elite, having bailed out of NW and comped my status over to CO on the DL takeover of NW, the upcoming merger of UA and CO is something that really bears watching. Fortunately, I do not yet have the big bank of miles built up like I had with NW.
Mergers, lately, have been the point at which airlines ''enhance'' (corporatespeak for screwing customers) thier ff programs. When Air France took over KLM, they mergered Air France's superb Frequence Plus and KLM's good Flying Dutchman into a new program, Flying Blue, that was a pale ghost of the two predecessor programs, and that has been further downgraded in a couple of major ''enhancements'' since. Flying Blue is now a pathetic joke. The same happened with the DL takeover of NW, when NW's great Worldperks program was merged into DL's average SkyMiles program. The resulting ''enhancements'' have made that program awful, especially as to award availibility.
I hope the same will not happen with CO and UA, but it well might. On the plus side, the corporate attitude toward customers generally and ff'ers in particular seem to be much better at CO/UA than it ever was at DL, so that is a hopeful sign. If not, I might have to bail out again to AA, even though that means connecting at Heathrow (uggh!).
Mergers, lately, have been the point at which airlines ''enhance'' (corporatespeak for screwing customers) thier ff programs. When Air France took over KLM, they mergered Air France's superb Frequence Plus and KLM's good Flying Dutchman into a new program, Flying Blue, that was a pale ghost of the two predecessor programs, and that has been further downgraded in a couple of major ''enhancements'' since. Flying Blue is now a pathetic joke. The same happened with the DL takeover of NW, when NW's great Worldperks program was merged into DL's average SkyMiles program. The resulting ''enhancements'' have made that program awful, especially as to award availibility.
I hope the same will not happen with CO and UA, but it well might. On the plus side, the corporate attitude toward customers generally and ff'ers in particular seem to be much better at CO/UA than it ever was at DL, so that is a hopeful sign. If not, I might have to bail out again to AA, even though that means connecting at Heathrow (uggh!).
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