I will definitely be leaving UA, but not until the end of 2014, and have mixed feelings about it. To be honest, I've had pretty good experiences on UA flights. This is my first program I've had status on, and for me, an insanely budget traveller, upgrades aren't important to me, but maxing out mileage is. The main benefit for me has been the extra miles earned. I admit having lounge access has been a really nice perk in the last 2 months since I've had it. I never check bags, so that's not important to me. I have been upgraded to business 3 times when I was silver this year (LAX-SFO, LAX<->MEX) and those experiences were okay, but I don't need them.
All this being said, because for a variety of reasons I can't qualify for a credit card in the US, I will no longer have the opportunity to have decent status. I'm not sure I will even spend $2500 on UA flights this year (unless somehow I get a ton of volunteering opportunities, but those have been REALLY limited lately in my experience). I won't have the CC so can't do that route. There's no way I'm going to spend $5000 just to get *G for the lounge access. I will have 50,000 miles flown easily (probably by summer, the way it's looking), probably with a decent chance for platinum if it weren't for those pesky PQD's. I feel like it's very clear that they don't value my business as a budget, albeit frequent, traveller.
I think the final straw for me is coming now that I am looking to book my last [saver economy] award tickets before Feb 1. I looked a couple weeks ago and had a great itinerary lined up, thanks in large part to Turkish, my favorite airline (and lounge in Istanbul, OMG!). Now ALL of that inventory has been pulled for the summer. I looked and there are only 3 days available to fly in the couple weeks leading up when I need to fly, and none +/- FIVE days either side of the date I need. LAX-IST, are you serious? The ONLY flights out of LAX at any time seem to be on Air Canada, which is consistent with some searching I was doing for a colleague's business ticket (only stuff available to get out of the US Europe-bound was on AC). Granted, AC also has a nice economy product, but seriously? There is almost no availability for domestic flights next summer, at least out of LAX (searching for friends/colleagues). If I can't use the miles, then what's the point?
I will be moving from my current city/airport of LAX somewhere new in Spring 2015. I don't know where yet, but PDX and SFO are the 2 most likely options. Both with a lot of UA flights, yes.
I really like *A and swore years ago after some awful experiences that I would never fly AA again. So most likely I will switch to another *A carrier, maybe Aegean to get easy *G for easy lounge access at least. Or maybe even a program like Alaska if it ends up making sense. I'll be hitting the real world at that time too so likely won't have as much time to travel and use a bajillion miles anyway. I still need to do more research on which *A carriers you can get decent economy redeems on, for places I'd actually want to go to.