The difference is that we've always had the chance to earn 8 in a year before, in as little as 40K miles (10K UA BIS miles per quarter), but of course 1Ks are flying a lot more than that.

People were PO'd because you had people trying to reach 1K this year and were thinking next year would be under the old earning rules (instead of pulling a fast one, as is becoming common). So instead of having two sets of earning rules, they combined them for UA 1Ks - I don't think anyone was expecting that, we would have been fine with our original 8.

This gives 1Ks a full year to evaluate the "new" program but still earn under the old rules. Might delay a lot of ship-jumping.