Isn't this one of the main point of mergers to increase size and market share thereby increasing pricing power over your customers? This can be done by actively raising prices or reducing benefits that have a cost to provide. This is what UA will do and it should be a surprise to nobody.

I could never understand the cheerleading for this merger from people here on FT, it was never going to make the MP program better or even UA as an airline better from a customer's perspective. Mergers are about increasing the bottom line by decreasing competition and consumer choice. Has there ever been a merger that truly benefited the consumer long term? My prediction is that in a year's time SWU's will be severely restricted by fare class, there will be fewer SWU's given out, E+ will be history, routes will be rationalized, planes will be jammed, prices will go up, but boy oh boy we can say we fly the world's largest airline and they have a cool new paint job.

We should all be thanking our lucky stars that AA is still managing to operate as a stand alone enterprise. Once they merge with someone and shrink their program UA will have no incentive to compete on the basis of a mileage program and will probably create some Delta like program that everyone will hate.