raehl311

You can't blame the bloggers. United sold the miles for a certain price. What happens after that point is irrelevant. When United sells a billion miles, United has to expect that a billion miles are, at some point, going to be redeemed.

From the airline perspective, selling miles is basically selling airfares now that will be redeemed later. Unfortunately, from the airline perspective, one way to minimize the actual cost of fulfilling those airfares they already sold is to devalue the miles.

Whether chase hands them out like candy in sign-up offers or leaves them laying about in the street is irrelevant - Chase paid for the miles, so Chase is footing the bill when they allow someone to churn cards to get them.


So if you're NOT abusing the CC system to get more miles, and United then goes and devalues your miles because they realize they sold too many for too little (or just realize they can improve their balance sheet by devaluing all the miles they already sold), the only one you can blame is United.


That said, the price on F awards has been out of wack with the rest of the award costs for a long time and I'm not surprised by the big increases there.

rcleclaire

Done! Done! Done!

Giving up my RCC and Chase stuff, too.

We were saving up our UA miles for an SQ F award, but forget it ... and I'm frankly less and less wowed by UA's F or J product. Goodbye UA and hello to more AS/AA.

moondog

I just redeemed SHA-HKG<24 hour stop>JFK<4 day stop>BOS for 55k (plus $50) in J. I could have booked the same flights with Avios, but the price would have been in line with the "new UA".

1k650

That is the crux of the problem - finding space in C on UA international. Unless UA increases award seat availability (which I do not see happening), you will have no choice but to use the higher partner award level.

hobo13

Exactly. Availability on AA is really bad. I'll concede that partner availability may be pretty good, but for those who don't live in a gateway the lack of domestic availability kills you. To some extent, DL has better domestic availability than AA in the sense that you can usually get a mid-level award, while on AA it is standard or nothing.

I don't like the changes either. I think it's crap. But it's the state of the industry. The game is about over, or at least not nearly as much fun as it once was.

balima

Achieving that which they wanted in the first place.
Many will disagree with me, but here goes anyway. Jeff is going to achieve that what he wanted.
Q4 earnings will go up due to lower liabilities. Yes we will all rant how unfair this is. We will call, send emails, tweet and post to facebook about what a crappy move this was. Some will leave, some will leave and then return when United's flight times work better than DL, AA etc. The vast majority of fliers - kettles, those that don't care about FF miles and the occasional flyers that don't give a rats a$$ about how we were are now cheated out of F in *A international routes. They will continue flying UA for all the reasons they are flying UA now. This gives Jeffy a little more time for new flyers to come into the fold who have no idea about how the program was devaluated and life goes on.

And yes, Jeff probably wants all you Million Miler legacies to leave UA and lower the costs associated with you getting your hard earned perks. This is no different than companies laying off seasoned workers to replace them immediately with lesser paid new hires.

Those that manufacture miles will continue to do so and it will just take longer to get that flight. Credit card churners will continue to churn. And business flyers will continue to fly for business. Is any large corporation really going to change who they fly with just because their support personnel now needs more FF miles to sit up front. Very doubtful. When AA devalues (and they will) AAdvantage folks will moan and then exit to UA and the great circle of FF miles will go on.

Just saying
Just saying

raehl311

That's not correct according to UA Insider. The *A chart pricing applies for the *A segments only, so if you're going UA-EU in UA C and *A Y, you pay the higher of the US-EU UA C or *A Y price, in this case the UA C one.

If you flew *A C as well, then you'd pay the *A C US-EU price.

cblaisd

Which strikes me as pretty shrewd on Mr. Smisek's part.

And, of course, there is nothing "unfair" about it at all. There is a lot, for some people, that is unfortunate and frustrating, but that's not the same thing as "unfair."

Yes, we've seen this cycle of "outrage" before.

I'm guessing that, say, one's local television consumer advocate would find it difficult to work up a lot of sympathy for folks who can no longer churn credit cards (or dramatically leverage cheap mileage runs) and essentially get such itins for close to free.

Bingo.

Complete with requisite dramatic threads on FT

u2vox

I'm coining MileagePus. You know, with that festering cesspool of changes we've all liked.

belfordrocks

You couldn't have done that anyway.

FlyWorld

This is different. In all prior cycles, we always said that MP was the only remaining good thing about this airline. Now it's decimated. This matters more than anything else $mi$ek has done.

sanfran767

Are we talking about the same thing? I'm seeing Saver (30/50) and Standard (55/125) options for AC FRA->SFO on 16 Apr:

BearX220

Hilarious. There's nothing sadder on these boards than the shrinking cohort that still believes UA will suddenly start spitting out good news.

Two things.

One, they have no retention strategy. The Q3 call with Smisek made that clear. No long-term vision. They're only thinking 90 days ahead, and never mind the future repercussions (e.g. a customer base that hates them and/or prioritizes low price).

Two, this is cartel thinking. It's how Comcast thinks. It's how Chase and the other few megabanks think. They deliver badly because -- they think -- you either have no choice or the price of changing providers is too high for you. (And when it comes to so-called "hub captive" customers, as in SFO or IAH, UA may be betting right -- there are plenty of those customers on FT moaning that they have "no options." You always have options, and when you fail to exercise them you're playing into Jeff's hands.)

All Jeff's pronouncements in 2010-2011 about how strong and competitive UA would be by 2012-13 are out the window. They missed every mark in the park. Their metrics are terrible and the merger keeps costing the company more money, not saving it. So for this management it's hang on time, and this up yours to customers is just incidental.

If card-churn abuse was the problem, they could have performed targeted surgery on the abusers. This is a comparative atom bomb. But you're right that there's not much public sympathy for people who want to fly overseas on the world's nicest airlines for a pittance. United knows this.

zebranz

Now I know how the people with money in Cyprus banks felt.

tommyleo

In that case, you mean MileagePus.

MileagePuss is a very different, shall we say, animal...