bocastephen

Loyalty is a two way street. If UA wants my continue loyalty, there needs to be balance between benefits and business. I fly a mix of fares, and that mix now includes more domestic P fares. That means I am buying into the cabin far more often than before due to the more reasonably priced FC fares and I can see many others are doing the same - and that is fine. However, I still expect that some of my flights will have CPU results, and some will still have RPU results - it can't be "buy F or sit in coach 99% of the time", otherwise the value of being 1K takes a substantial hit. I am not flying 100k a year just so I can cancel/deposit award tickets for free, or board in G1, or get a free snack box

I don't think anyone here is legitimately suggesting UA price F so far out of reach that no one buys it, the cabin stays empty and it can be filled with CPUs.

However, monetization cannot be done in a vacuum without regard to micro-analysis of how it affects not only loyal customers, but UA's own bottom line.

Fare difference buy-ups, offered proactively or subtly, are fine - that's the policy WE asked for years ago - the ability to re-ticket a coach fare into the lowest F fare without a change fee. It's short sighted to think UA wouldn't extend that policy to others, even market the option - it was never a trade secret meant only for Flyertalkers, however the issue with upgrade pricing is something that was brought to Larry Kellner's attention that many years ago - the very same issues still exist today, and either United is unable to fix them, or has decided not to.

The issue can be distilled into two very simple examples:

1. Kettles without status being offered day of departure "segment fee" upgrades (not fare difference) at a fraction of the price that Elite customers are offered the same upgrade. That needs to stop.

2. Segment fee upgrades offered to Kettles should not be priced at a level that results in a net loss to UA due to the opportunity cost of lost checked bag fees, E+ sales, onboard F+B, etc. Right now there is no workflow, or thought into how revenue can be maximized from a non-status customer.

What should the workflow be? At check-in, online or by kiosk, the system should do the following:

1. first, ask if the customer is checking bags - if the answer is yes, then full stop - NO segment fee upgrade. UA should collect the bag fee revenue right then and there, it's free money. From there, customers can be offered E+, priority access, or other products not yet available, like discounted onboard food vouchers.

2. if not checking bags, the customer can be offered a buy-up to E+ first. Actually, I've been trying to get UA to start packaging products into logical groups to entice people to buy:

For example, don't just offer E+ - offer it with a discounted coupon for onboard food or wifi, or package it with priority security and G2 boarding...or just offer priority security for $x with a pop-up saying the current checkpoint wait time is x minutes. Put together a mix of products that produce incremental value adds to the customer. The F seat should be the LAST item offered for buy-up during the check-in process.

If the customer has declined the other product offers, then, and ONLY if there will be empty F seats at departure, the system can offer a segment fee buy-up at a cheap price. If they want to sell the seat out from the CPU list, the buy-up really needs to be either a fare difference, or a segment fee charge significantly above the revenue from checking bags and E+ and food, and if the segment fee buy-up is offered to a Kettle, it needs to go to an Elite for the same amount or less, never more.

So, there are other products United can and should be using to entice incremental spend before selling F out from the CPU list.....and auctioning it at the gate with people, some of whom are GS, standing in the boarding line? Very, very bad taste - that also needs to stop. All it takes is ONE of those customers to take ONE ticket to a competitor and the revenue from that buy-up sold for $89 is now a loss. I can't imagine any GS or 1K standing in line listing to the sale of the last F seats out from under the and thinking "good for United! go get that revenue, I'll keep my seat in coach"

Flight are not "running full" - UA has yet to report a 100% system load factor. In fact, many flights are running with open seats - obviously not "sold to somebody else."

As to your other examples? SQ and CX are losing money hand over fist, and that's with subsidies. In the US we need to pay money to join a lounge which is very substandard to the lounges offered for free to foreign carrier Elite customers - so, should SQ, CX and the gulf carriers start charging for lounge memberships? By your logic, no one should get anything for free - no more free perks - take what we give you or get lost.

The gulf carriers offer a nice product and they make money through subsidies whether someone buys it or not. Let's see how well they do if the electronics ban is picked up by other countries and business travelers flee the gulf carriers. LCCs are starting to fly international routes and offering decent premium products for a fraction of the cost of legacy carriers. Let's see what that does to revenue and loyalty.

At this point I'm better earning Amex points and using them to buy-down the difference between coach and first on domestic flights - however, without loyalty, I am just shopping for the cheapest F seat, and quite often I find a cheaper option on Delta or AA so what do I need United for? I can find cheap business class tickets to Asia and Europe if I am flexible, sometimes for the same price as a W or V fare - what do I need GPU's for?

By your theory, what do we need frequent flyer elite tiers for?