Kacee

Me either. But I don't quite understand the anti-MP vitriol when you compare to other FFPs. The anger should directed at DOJ, Wall Street, and all those people who keep buying airline tickets despite the constant FFP devaluations.

spin88

No vitriol here, just a change in incentives. I spent from 1997-2011 working very hard to keep my flying in my US-based program of the moment, because that meant I got meaningful rewards for my loyalty. Jeff broke me of that in 2012, and given that SkyPeso is not a great program, I am now free to fly non-US carriers that I would not have flown before. More of my travel $$$ (and I think other as well) now goes to foreign carriers. The massive cuts (by Parker, Smisik, and Anderson) to FFP rewards may short term look profitable, but long term they have just turned on many Americans to foreign/LCC carriers.

travelinmanS

This is the smart way to do things and it is what I've started doing. Either burning miles or paying for business class and not caring what airline I'm flying. It's liberating.

Nonetheless I find MP to be the best of the redemption programs amongst the big 3. Certainly much better than AA. I don't care about status since I'm always flying in Business or First (on discounted fares which are sometimes even less than coach), I get treated just fine no matter what airline I'm on.

dmurphynj

Simply: no.

RustyC

This was the second year in a row I didn't vote for AA, DL or UA for any Freddies, and would encourage others to do same. Even if it means voting for some ULCC program instead.

For many of us the change to revenue-based was far too severe a gutting to pretend like it's business as usual. It's not like grading on a curve where suddenly you get a much worse class but still have to give someone an A.

The whole concept of valuing and rewarding loyalty is practically out the window. The take-backs far outweighed anything given to the minority (I've said repeatedly that this is a revenue play and is NOT a zero-sum game where you take from Peter to give to Paul, as the airlines deliberately mischaracterize it.).

The real bottom line for airlines is feeling they don't have to try as hard to compete now that they've merged down to three. It's becoming a fat & sassy oligopoly just like the big 3 automakers or the big 3 broadcast networks used to be in the days when they dominated those markets and dictated terms and turned out a lot of bad product.

Those being rewarded now tend to be biz-travel hub captives working for companies that hate to buy the expensive tickets and are always trying to grudgingly come up with travel policies to reduce instances where they get saddled with those.

What they've thrown away, OTOH, is arguably the most successful concept in the history of marketing, so powerful that it could by itself incentivize travel that otherwise would not have been bought. The old-style mileage run (now useful in far fewer cases) was a tribute to this.

The ULCCs, for now at least, are more rewarding as far as RDMs and lowest number of tickets required to get a free one. Quite a change from years ago when fare matches + the FF program kept many ULCCs from being able to compete with legacies.

If there were ever a time to make a statement that negative changes have NOT been OK and have gone too far, it's now. How much is left to lose? For many of us the major reasons for using FT in the first place are gone, and today it's a case of learning ever-more-exotic strategies or finding deals based on price. I just got back from a trip to southeast Asia that would have been a slamdunk for DL in the old days even at fares maybe $200 higher than the lowest thanks to mileage and status being factored in. This time it went to Qatar Airways on price, though they also tended to have better service and were more rewarding on AA RDMs than AA itself would have been on the same ticket.

RustyC

Yep. It's liberating in a way not to have to line up nearly all travel on a single airline/alliance to requalify status like I did at gold or higher for 24 years running, but the sheer arrogance on display at the airlines is pretty stunning. They obviously believe it's a new day and that now that they've merged down to three they don't have to compete like they used to. But you'd think after all the black-swan events of the aughts where they leaned on loyal customers in their darkest hours (such as the big award sale in late 2001 to at least get people flying again after 9/11) that they'd be less willing to just drain the reservoir of goodwill and begin dismantling the loyalty infrastructure as people disengage from the whole thing.

Few have been hit harder than economy-class travelers to Asia. But now we've got the Chinese carriers and the ME3 going there, as well as familiar gadflies like EVA and ongoing dumpster fires like Korean. And it's generally all about price.

Will the US3 try harder to compete, in ways beneficial to customers? Heck, no. They'll run to the Trump administration to try to get rules disadvantaging the foreigners and constricting consumer choices, as well as working other choke points that might have that effect. That's the real tradition.

PsiFighter37

I got an email about this from UA today - don't ever recall getting these in the past several years...

WineCountryUA

While UA has not done this every year that I can tell, UA has done this before, such as 2013, 2012 and earlier (based on a search of my archived emails). As have other airlines and travel websites.

Halo117

Why does ua need to win the freddies...they can just pay off that magazine they claim that they are the best 14 years running.