I’ve previously shared the details of the Randy Petersen Travel Executive Summit.
The heads of the American AAdvantage, United Mileage Plus, and Hyatt Gold Passport programs have been slated to be there for a lunch, where Randy offers comments on 30 years of frequent flyer programs and these leaders add their own insights. A great opportunity to meet the people who run the programs (and if it were me, I’d be thinking, get their cards and figure out how to follow up with theirs assistants whenever my miles fail to post – hah!).
Well, the news today is that Jeff Robertson is now joining them as well. Here are my past posts on Jeff Robertson, who has always struck me as a candid guy. He may not always say things that I like, but when he’s speaking a get a pretty good idea where the Skymiles program is coming from. And I know I have some real questions to ask him…!
I want to ask Maya Leibman of American when they’re going to change their million miler program, and stop counting miles earned from any source towards lifetime status. Not that I want that to happen, mind you, I just want a little advance warning. And to ask Jeff Zidell of Hyatt where all those property-specific “G” bonuses went, and when we’ll see Faster Free Nights again! And for Jeff Foland, what the future of systemwide upgrades is, if they’ll follow Continental’s lead as in so many other recent decisions and make those available on any fare (and why they’ve moved to 12-month expiration on Systemwides, which can disadvantage 1Ks who requalify for their status early).
As I say, lots of questions, hopefully lots of answers, but these are certainly folks I want to meet, and the cool thing is that you can too.
For those of us who can’t make it, a DVD would be a godsend.
Please don’t ask him when there going to stop counting miles from all sources. Instead, I would encourage you to ask the other carriers when they are going to follow AA’s lead towards building customer loyalty and start counting all miles earned towards lifetime status. I really don’t want to even hint to AA to stop this benefit.
I second Chris’ point, why put ideas in a decision maker’s head?
@Chris they have very much discussed and vetted the idea of stopping counting miles from all sources towards lifetime status. It was put on hold as far as programming priority last year, and AAdvantage went through three Presidents in about three months, so the only question is where they stand these days on that plan and also which miles will count going forward (as it may not be just flight miles..