Expanding a bit (and, whoever that person is who called them "trinkets", pay attention): Special Dividends, especially at the higher levels, really was a big deal and really was an incentive to keep flying on US all year rather than split to get status on another airline. Sure, some of them are silly, like the flower deals, but every airline has silly perks like that.

But up until this week's announcement, I was looking at weird hub-pinball routings on an end-of-year business trip so I could squeeze an extra couple thousand PQM to hit 85k, since at that level Special Dividends kicks in with the ability to gift US Silver (the actual status, not a trial) to someone, and extends the UDUs onto award tickets.

But now? Why bother with that many extra hours in planes? The status gift is worth a whole lot less, especially since I'd have been gifting it to someone who would come in with practically no stickers and would still have to pay extra every time just for MCE, and once the program merge hits I won't even be getting UDUs on paid tickets, let alone awards.

And that's just the tip of the iceberg in terms of stuff pmUS flyers are losing across the board. UDUs were an awfully nice perk, and are the big obvious thing, but there was a whole lot more to USDM than that. I've been repeatedly harping on stuff like the now-disappeared Platinum benefit of guaranteed Y availability, the all-tiers perk of free Preferred seats (which included extra-legroom locations like exit rows), etc. in an attempt to get that across to people.

The result of this devaluation -- and it is a devaluation -- is that a lot of us are not so happy, and we become even less happy when repeatedly sneered at, dismissed, patronized, etc. by people who only know pmAA, don't know the USDM program, and can't imagine what pmUS could've had that anyone would care about.