After countless failed attempts to purchase Silverwings flight tickets, the plaintiffs and other lifetime members decided that the last resort for having UA honor its commitment to those who purchased lifetime memberships was to file a class action. All reasonable communications both by telephone and in writing failed. UA refused to fix the broken program.

Initially, when UA offered the Silverwings program, it was an annual program. It went so well that UA decided to sell lifetime memberships that offered “significant savings” on UA fares to worldwide destinations. At one point in time, there were more than five-hundred thousand Silverwings members. Only UA knows how many there are now.

The fares were called “zone” fares and the cost of each zone depended on the flying distance between the origin and destination the Silverwings member wished to travel. The lifetime membership included the option to purchase a similar Silverwings ticket for a travel companion. The companion could be a spouse of any other person chosen by the lifetime member.

After a few years, UA stopped maintaining the program. The zone fares stopped getting updated and/or prepared for international destinations. The zone fares for domestic destinations were still prepared but the fares were not a “significant savings” by any means. In fact, the domestic zone fares were much higher in price than fares that could be purchased by using united.com or a travel agent. Despite this, UA did not refund the lifetime membership fee.

Many of us wrote to UA complaining about the failure of UA to maintain the program. Initially, we were ignored. Eventually, our complaints became numerous because there were so many members complaining to UA about the inability to purchase a Silverwings ticket.

After UA stopped maintaining the program, a Silverwings ticket could not be purchased either with a significant savings or with any savings. Quite simply, UA had abandoned the program despite the fact that UA had collected our lifetime fee and did not refund it.

In fairness to UA, there was one lifetime member who complained to UA so much that UA furnished the member with a special contact at UA so that the member could continue to purchase Silverwings fares from a department within UA’s E-Commerce. However, even that one member has since been shut off entirely from purchasing Silverwings tickets since the merger of the two airlines.

UA still advertises the Silverwings program on its website

http://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/prod...lverwings.aspx

If you go to the above site and follow the directions to the letter, you cannot purchase a Silverwings ticket. The web site appears to be set up for “window dressing” purposes to cause a member to falsely believe that the Silverwings site is up and running the way if formerly did before UA allowed the program to go into a non functioning state.

Anyway, for those who purchased lifetime Silverwings memberships in the past, the filed class action might cause the court or UA to honor UA's commitment and once again, zone fares for domestic and international fares will again be available with “significant” savings on air fares.

Please recall, prior to the filing of the class action, there are two threads concerning Silverwings on Flyertalk and one thread on Mile Point. In those threads, you will see that UA was repeatedly asked to fix the broken program but they did not. UA offered empty promises and false information but allowed the program to not function.

The threads can be found here:

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...cancelled.html

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...s-members.html

http://milepoint.com/forums/threads/...mitment.15888/
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