From our other sites
The story
On September 29, 2026, ANA released a revised proposal for its elite-status “SFC” program. The new rules originally announced in April had required cardholders to rack up at least ¥3 million in annual card spending just to keep using airport lounges — a condition that drew fierce backlash, especially from “mile pilgrims” (mairu shugyō, users who binge-fly in short bursts to earn elite status). Following this revision, 5ch users debated whether the ¥3 million threshold is actually reasonable, questioned the old system’s design of granting near-permanent elite status in the first place, and pointed out that “pilgrimage” flyers have been crowding out regular island-route commuters.
So what happened to the controversial “¥3 million a year in card spending” rule?
On September 29, 2026, ANA (All Nippon Airways) released a redesign proposal for its elite-member perks program, the “ANA Super Flyers Card” (SFC). The airline had already announced a new set of rules back in April, but a flood of criticism from users forced it back to the drawing board. So how did the lounge-access condition that drew the biggest backlash end up changing?
ANA’s SFC works so that once you meet certain requirements once, you get near-permanent access to a raft of perks — starting with airport lounges — for as long as you keep the card. That’s why quite a few people have taken to intensively flying ANA for a full year just to qualify, a practice known as “mile pilgrimage” (mairu shugyō).
Source: trafficnews.jp / Original article here
What people said
Overseas it's a huge help.
Domestically there's not much benefit since you've got convenience stores anyway.
I honestly don't get the mentality.
Eating and drinking in the lounge right before a flight? Even bathroom breaks are more restricted in the air than on the ground.
Are these people just big eaters who can't be satisfied with the in-flight meal?
Phone bills and property tax are still on auto-debit since switching is a hassle, but I put pretty much everything else on the card.
When I checked recently:
Me: ¥2.94 million a year (damn, so close but not quite enough)
Another card: about ¥200,000
My wife: about ¥2.4 million
That's roughly where we landed.
Though we don't even use the ANA lounge.
No good — Sega would get hit too.
What is this, Reiwa Natto? (a startup mocked online for shady "forever" perk promises)
That said, some people did all that pilgrimage specifically for this, so maybe give pilgrims two free lounge visits a year.
Charge for anything beyond that — or make it 3 free visits per ¥1 million spent, something like that.
Why not just refund the entire cost of the pilgrimage?
Though I guess it's a world 5ch old-timers have no connection to, so you wouldn't know the reality.
It'll drive up card cancellations.
That's exactly what happened to Saison — everyone left because of it.
It's basically a message saying "please, just cancel already." Don't make me spell it out, it's embarrassing.
>>Paying an annual fee AND spending ¥3 million just to get priority lounge entry — that's hilarious.
No, that's not it — where this really shows its value is on international connections when you're transferring abroad.
Tons of food options too.
But the real different-league experience was the Middle Eastern airlines' lounges.
No alcohol, but everything else was way too luxurious.
Not just China — lounges outside Japan are luxurious in general.
And yet tickets departing from Japan are absurdly expensive lol.
Flights between Naha and the outer islands are a lifeline for daily commuting.
Pilgrims hogging those seats are nothing but harmful.
That's because idiot JAL included island routes in their promotion.
Routes that serve as a daily lifeline for islanders should be excluded from these campaigns.
I used to fly to the islands monthly for work, and it was a real scramble for seats.
Having pilgrims fill up seats to regions only reachable by plane really is a nuisance.
Do the pilgrimage on routes where the Shinkansen is also an option.
If you make it your main card and consolidate all your spending on it, even an ordinary person would hit that much…
Averaging ¥250,000 a month on the card is actually pretty tough.
Some payments are bank-transfer only, after all.
The people selling brand-new iPhones and MacBooks slightly below cost on Yahoo Auctions are just trying to run up their card spending (a trick to hit a spending threshold by buying and reselling at a loss).
ANA was the weird one for letting you keep it just by paying the card's annual fee.
That's true, honestly…
But there's no denying it added a lot of extra value.
What's really messed up (and kind of cruel) is that ANA itself advertised to attract these pilgrims, and now it's coldly cutting them loose lol.
For people who can't spend ¥3 million, it's hell.
But for people who can, the lounges get less crowded — heaven, basically.
JAL is the one that split the difference and just kept its promise.
Yeah.
Same thing with Disney — it's too cheap so it's packed, which is why wealthy people are flocking to USJ, where you can just buy your way to the front of the line.
Then again, if the crowding still doesn't ease up, the people currently spending ¥3 million will sense "we're next" and bail out early too.
Just get a credit card that includes lounge access, problem solved.
Guess I'll just have to ditch my ANA JCB Gold and switch to something else.
And once you do that, JAL becomes more convenient than ANA anyway, so ANA miles become pointless and even the annual fee is a waste.
If everyone switches to JAL because of this, it'll probably just degrade JAL's service too lol.
JAL doesn't cover a lot of routes in western Japan, so people will probably switch to the Shinkansen instead.
JAL has its own baggage though — the grudges of its former shareholders are practically haunting it.
Didn't JAL set its condition at 300 flights?
The lounge crowding hasn't been solved there either, and realistically no new people are going to qualify at this point.
Last Friday, JAL flight 114 from Itami to Haneda at 11:25 was running a bit late, and after landing at Haneda they announced "Passenger XX, connecting to the Haneda-Itami flight, please proceed immediately" — I felt embarrassed just hearing it as a bystander.
Mile pilgrims are truly something else lol 🤣
The other day I flew from Okayama to Haneda, and they made an announcement for "passengers connecting to the Okinawa flight" too lol.
If you know what you're doing, you'd check the aircraft/schedule details for round-trip connections in advance to make sure you don't miss your flight.
Background and Key Points of Debate
ANA’s SFC program works on a system where, once you satisfy the requirements a single time, your elite membership lasts essentially forever. This encouraged a subset of users to take on “mile pilgrimages” — flying intensively in a short period specifically to qualify. The new rules ANA announced this past April would have required “at least ¥3 million in annual card spending” just to keep lounge access, which triggered a fierce backlash, especially from the pilgrimage crowd, and forced the company to reconsider. On the thread, several arguments ran in parallel: whether the ¥3 million bar is actually reasonable (can an ordinary person really sustain ¥250,000 a month in card spending?), skepticism toward the underlying decision to make elite status "permanent" in the first place, and the observation that pilgrimage-driven bookings have been filling up island routes and squeezing out residents who depend on them for daily transportation. At the same time, some users emphasized value beyond the lounge itself — like priority check-in when connecting internationally abroad — making this a debate that doesn’t reduce to simple for-or-against. It’s worth noting that the specific conditions for the revised “LITE” tier weren’t detailed at the time of this thread, and this article doesn’t cover them either.
*This article is excerpted and summarized from the 5ch (News Speed+) thread “[Mile Pilgrimage] ANA’s New “SFC” Program to Be Partially Revised — What Happens to the Controversial “Under ¥3 Million/Year in Spending = No Lounge Access” Rule? Conditions for the New “LITE” Tier.”
Leave a Reply