To become GS you have to spend a lot which means ticketing in F or Y for single cabin. This means these folks are already in first and not concerned about upgrades. This leaves 1K and lower to fight for the complimentary upgrades. Since the upgrade process is determined by status level then fare class isn't this basing on spend? If you changed to status based spending, you would end up with the same system because there would be a dramatically reduced number of 1K's which would trickle upgrades down to Premier Platinum and so on.

My thought for starting this thread was to voice my opinion that GS members are great for the bottom line but without the other frequent flyers it doesn't work. UA needs loyalty and if its frequent flyers feel they aren't important it will hurt long term.