Originally Posted by sincx

I haven't seen this posted before; if it has and I missed it, my apologies.

Here goes: we all know upgrades have become harder to get since the UA/CO merger. There are a lot of theories here; blaming this lack of upgrades on TODs is a popular one. However, while we can blame the new United for some of these issues, I think one possible reason upgrades became harder to obtain is that, as a result of the merger, fewer people are getting more upgrades.

Let me explain.

Assume there are two airlines, A and B. A flies CITY-ORD, B flies CITY-IAH.

Each airline has 1 flight a week; 4 flights a month. Each airplane has 2 first class seats.

4 passengers are part of A's frequent flier program: Albert, Betty, Charlie, and Daisy.

Albert flies CITY-ORD 4 times a month, Betty flies 3 times a month, Charlie once a month, and Daisy once a year.

Whenever Albert flies (which is every flight), he's always upgraded. Betty is also upgraded whenever she flies. Charlie is occasionally upgraded (when he flies and Betty doesn't fly). Daisy is almost never upgraded.

4 passengers are part of B's frequent flier program: Jeff, Kara, Luke, and Michelle.

Again, Jeff files CITY-IAH 4 times a month, Kara flies 3 times a month, Luke once a month, and Michelle once a year. They get upgraded in the same way as the 4 passengers of airline A.

Now, let's assume imagine that Albert and Jeff are management consultants and they fly a lot. Albert, in addition to CITY-ORD 4x a month, also files CITY-IAH 2x a month. Jeff, in addition to CITY-IAH 4x a month, also flies CITY-ORD 2x a month. If Albert signed up for B's frequent flier program, he would be ranked behind Jeff and Kara and would only get upgraded occasionally, if both J and K are not on the flight. Same for Jeff and A's freq. flier program.

Next, airlines A and B merge and combine their frequent flier program. Assume CITY-ORD is 1 mile further than CITY-IAH. The new freq. flier rank looks like this:

Albert, Jeff, Betty, Kara, Charlie, Luke, Daisy, Michelle.

Now, Albert and Jeff both get upgraded every time they fly, both CITY-ORD and CITY-IAH.

However, where as Betty would always get upgraded on CITY-ORD and Kara on CITY-IAH, now Betty and Kara would only be upgraded if both Albert and Jeff are not on their flights. Remember that Jeff is on half the CITY-ORD flights and Albert on half the CITY-IAH flights. Thus, Betty and Kara now have 50% or less chance of getting upgrades.

Furthermore, where Charlie and Luke would get occasional upgrades before, when Betty and Kara aren't flying, Charlie and Luke will almost never get upgrades now, since they'll need Albert, Jeff, and Betty/Kara to not fly when they're flying.

As you can see in the above example, the total number of upgrade seats have not changed. However, due to the combined freq. flier program after the merger, the top fliers are getting more of the upgrades to the detriment of mid-tier fliers, which is exactly what we've seen.

Again, I don't think this explains all the issues before the lack of upgrades, or even most of them. But I think this is responsible for at least some of the lack of upgrades that we golds and silvers have noticed since 3/3.

I look forward to your thoughts!