Sounds like my travel philosophy is much like yours. For example, I'll often fly UNTD from San Diego to Hawaii even though that requires a stop in either LAX or SFO because I can be pretty sure both a companion and I will be upgraded. I'll do that even though I might be able to book a somewhat less expensive direct flight on Alaska Air. And the ability to do get that on the Hawaii flight is what leads me to book United from SAN-SFO (as an example) even though it would be a lot more convenient and often less expensive and less restrictive in terms of refunds to fly Southwest. If that benefit goes away, I don't have the incentive to place all the other travel with United in order to get that benefit. Again, maybe this is not the typcial situation and perhaps greater numbers of more valuable customers would prefer that every flyer has to stand on their own status, but it feels good to at least put it out there just in case someone actually monitors the boards trying to gain insight into how certain customers' purchasing patterns would change based on changes to the underlying benefit structure.