Miles+Bonus Removes What I Called A “Laughable” Elite Discount – But Now I Need It!

Aegean Airlines has seen their program change quite a bit over the last couple of years as they shifted from having what was more like “lifetime” Star Alliance Gold to focusing more on their customers in their base of Greece. As a result, the current Miles+Bonus program is pretty good for those who actually fly on Aegean and has a lot of worthwhile perks. Most of them are worthwhile, anyway…

Miles+Bonus Removes What I Called A “Laughable” Elite Discount

Recap

One of the perks that the Miles+Bonus program, when it was revamped in 2014, gave out to their Gold members was a 50% off companion coupon. Essentially, it was a buy-one-get-one type coupon and they gave 2 of them per Gold member. Nice discount, right? Not exactly.

That’s right – a discount of $0!

First of all, it could only be used on their domestic network (which is quite extensive) and second of all, it only worked on the base ticket price and not on the taxes and fees. The result was that you may only get $5 off or nothing at all. You can read all about that in this post here.

Miles+Bonus Removes The Discount Coupon

No longer available to Miles+Bonus elite members! Now I miss it!

I was going through my Miles+Bonus account recently and checking through my elite coupons and noticed that my 50% off discount coupons were not there. The previous ones expired on November 24, 2015 but I received a new set of all my coupons then except this one (including the 4 business class upgrades that Gold members receive).

It turns out that they quietly removed the 50% off discount coupon from this year’s set of benefits. I am not sure why they did that. While there were most instances that I found it was the most laughable discount I had received on an airline, there were still some situations where it came in handy for some. Maybe it was costing them more money than they thought? More likely, it was way underused and they may offer something else more substantial next time (my guess and my hope). Still, one set of coupons is now gone from the elite set of benefits given to Miles+Bonus Gold members.

But Now I Need It!

Yep, the same discount I thought was laughable for a discount on the routes I was looking at would now have come in pretty handy for me! 🙂 I was looking at some flight options for this year that I need to take and was planning out these trips when I saw how much of the cost was just the ticket price and not the taxes and fees. I thought, “Perfect time to use it!”

That is when I was poking around and realized that they removed those as a benefit. I guess it serves me right for calling it a “laughable” discount (though I am not claiming in any way that my post was responsible for it disappearing!!). I guess I need to look at all benefits as something that I can use someday and be happy for what they gave me – I have learned my lesson!

Did you ever use the 50% companion discount? What kind of savings did you receive from it?