jackdaniels72

Hi all! New to the forum and what prompted me to join is I'm contemplating leaving United for Delta. The reason I'm considering changing plans is I'm a lowly silver status for UA and no longer get the benefits of booking economy seating for long haul flights... ironically though, I spent more on airfare last year than in years when I've been a gold and platinum traveler. I'm about to book a flight to Brazil for $2,500 (this is about double the normal rate for some reason) and was shocked to see UA wants an additional $150-200 per leg for the privilege of sitting in economy - so I'd be looking at roughly $3K all in. So I guess United considers me to be on par with a customer who travels once or twice a year?

So what is a high value customer that they want to retain?
Here's a rough guideline of my annual travel - I usually do 2-3 trips overseas per year to Lat Am, Europe and Hong Kong plus a fair amount of domestic travel. The domestic travel isn't necessarily high mileage where it's a coast to coast trip shorter 1-2 hour flights to NYC & Boston, but since I'm traveling at peak times during the week these tickets run about $800-1200. I estimate I spend $15-20K per year on airfare....most of it for business. I'm on the road once or twice a month on avg.

I never looked into the specifics of UA's premier program b/c I never really paid attention since I was gold status. As a silver flyer the shortcomings are much more glaring where paying extra for economy and their new policy of free baggage checks going from 2 to 1 bags has sure got my attention. The strategy Smisek has chosen to undertake where they try to nickel and dime their customers for $100 here and $100 will be a turkey in the long run.

Anyone else have this same experience with UA? Is the Delta program any better?