Thank you for the welcome (I've been lurking for almost a decade, but other than PassPlus I have little experience I can share that hasn't already been shared by those far more knowledgeable and experienced than I).

The pricing example I gave was just an anally-derived figure. My basic point was that, when you look at all of the domestic flights that United flies (since international would obviously be mostly longer flights), especially when you take into account that the ORD and IAD hubs have a lot of destinations "near" them, my guess would be that 80% of United's domestic routes are less than 1,700 miles one way.

So why lump 80% of all domestic flights into one single bucket? It makes the new Secure program a good deal for one class of flier (those with a lot of flights between, say 750-1700 miles one way) but a really bad deal for another class of flier (those with a lot of short haul flights). A smaller first bucket (0-250?, 0-350?, etc) would have allowed them to continue to entice all of the former class of flier without loosing the latter. Which seems important given that the former Assured program was useful to BOTH classes.