Originally Posted by
Ctheexpat
The requirements are so low that anyone not meeting them has no right to consider himself an Elite anyway. Why do you think they are doing this? I've read here on FT people bragging about earning 1K for under $3000. That's just ridiculous and all 3 major airlines should do what they can to weed those people out (including not allowing credit card pend to count since that's easy to get around)
The fact there are 1K's who've earned that with spends under $3000 is bad enough, but its laughable when they come here, complain about UA and call themselves one of Uniteds "best customers"
Profits ultimately matter, not revenue. Granted, the two are correlated, but somebody who makes 1K with $3000 spend (3cpm) is almost certainly flying low-demand routes, probably on mileage runs. UA needs to fill marginal seats on these routes to break even (at best), which is why such low fares are offered.
Of course a 1K who spends $20k is more "worthy" of elite status than a $3k spender. But what about, say, $3k vs $6k spend in discount economy? Hard to say which is better from UA's perspective if the bigger spender is flying out of more expensive, higher-demand routes with planes that UA can easily fill with other flyers.