I got to listen in as techgirl shared her experiences as a United customer with Robert Sahadevan of Mileage Plus.

She told him that the changes to United's top-level elite program were chasing her away. She said she was doing more *A instead of UA, and he said "great, we get a share of that revenue too." She also said she was tilting more to AA. His response: if that's a better decision for you, you should fly American.

He was very patronizing throughout, and it became clear that UA wasn't interested in building their loyalty program to attract her business, because apparently she just wasn't spending enough with them on each ticket to matter. (She told him her UA revenue figure last year was > $20k.)

Sahadevan's colleague was much more thoughtful, and asked whether restoring the ability of Systemwide Upgrades to their old rules but awarding them based on revenue rather than including them in the elite packet made sense. An interesting thought.

Sahadevan made one very telling comment. He said that for too long flyers have gotten more value out of the airline than their revenue was worth. He described the upgrades and bonuses received by elites who haven't paid high fares as "an inefficiency in the system."