re: Avianca "Life Miles" - Questions and Discussion
Unfortunately it's the same with many things. Mistake fares are an example... people pushed those to the limit with Swiss (Rangoon 3), and then again with UA ex Denmark... and that's now pretty much then end of them. IIRC Lifemiles and cabotage (via Tokyo) + other 'onward' routings has suffered a similar fate.
I wouldn't quite draw an equivalence with mistake fares (or, more specifically, mistake fares which can fall within US jurisdiction). Nor is it an attack (direct or not) on the ethics or whatnot of people who used the programme so much in its infancy. It is merely an observation.
The observation does note that AV LM was pretty generous. LH F wasn't blocked, very affordable (not as much as US DM at the time, but different leeways) and, perhaps not too ignobly, plenty of exploitable tricks, and it could pretty much all be done online.
Some of this was outside of AV's influence (to a degree). LH F pretty much is getting locked down on any of the "low target" FFPs (though ironically still available via UA and AC). SQ decided to play hardball on its premium inventory between Singapore and Australia, which has affected nearly all partner FFPs.
Maybe the surprise is more that the early days were earmarked as the "standard" more than what it actually was, which was simply a boon. It's a shame the equilibrium right now is pretty subpar (though oddly still workable, but enough to make me a bit weary about my LM balance).
I think there's a difference between sharing information openly which is then taken by bloggers (and pretty quickly shut down) vs making information available for sharing within the [established] AFF community.
Wasn't there a spreadsheet created for exactly the purpose of sharing 'tricks' without having to broadcast them?
I think the spreadsheet might have been lost in the ether (not really, but for intents and purposes). After all, someone had to take charge to add members to be able to see it. Also, except for its early days, it wasn't really updated anyway. Finally, people were having the same reservations about sharing it on a spreadsheet when people were being indiscriminately added to the view list anyway, which means it was no better than the websites.
FT didn't even have a spreadsheet, but it did have an extensive "language" which is fairly non-intelligible to anyone not in the know, and the only way to gain knowledge was to either (a) guess, or (b) PM someone generous enough to share, or (c) meet someone in person to know about it, or (d)
possibly learn it at a FT related education function.
Many of the "tricks" shared by bloggers, if that was many at all, were not some of the most arcane ones which were exploited (and there were some real chestnuts that were of that arcane type). Yes, there was that blogger who seemingly destroyed a good chestnut by reporting his unfortunate incident to the authorities, but at best it was probably illegal anyway and at worst "so be it".
) and there is plenty value left in it for those willing to accept and work with the recent changes.
