As long as dronofrio is OK with using his/her letter as a basis for the 1K group submittal....

Dear Mr. Smisek,

We have been long time United customers and have, for the many past years, been loyal 1K members.

We have closely followed the changes your company is making leading up to a final merger with Continental and we must say that from our perspective the benefits of being a loyal frequent flyer are being slowly eliminated.

Please understand our disappointment when booking class upgrade fare code limitations were introduced. Since the introduction of these limitations many of us have flown numerous international itineraries and have yet to take a flight that qualified for a Systemwide or Regional upgrade. This particular limitation has rendered these upgrade awards nearly useless.

Flight class upgrades notwithstanding, we remained reasonably happy 1K members because our dedication to travel on United allowed us to take advantage of other important travel benefits such as priority check-in, baggage handling and boarding. Your recent announcement of changes to the priority boarding process, which were "advertised" as an additional benefit of the United/Continental merger, further diminishes the value of being a 1K member. Where, in the past, a 1K member enjoyed priority check-in and boarding over lower tier Gold members it now appears that all frequent flyers, regardless of qualifying level, have been granted the same benefit. While we appreciate having check-in and boarding priority it seems that we need not be a 1K member to enjoy this benefit.

While it appears that many of the frequent flyer benefits will remain intact following this merger, it is clear that there is much less differentiation between the various Elite qualifying tiers. The end result of these changes will be that we will no longer select a more expensive Star Alliance flight over that of another carrier since we can take advantage of the Star Alliance Elite benefits at a lower tier (for example flying 50K miles instead of 100K).

While there may be good business reasons behind the changes that are being introduced, we felt it important to provide you with the opinion of a group of formerly very satisfied frequent flyers. With these changes, the Star Alliance stands to lose at least half of our quite significant annual travel expenditures. We no longer have a compelling reason for selecting United or a Star Alliance partner as our airline of choice.

We are hopeful that our opinion will help you to better understand the needs of your customers and not be viewed as just another annoying complaint.

Respectfully,