Originally Posted by
emcampbe
I disagree - I think with the $20 differentials, or whatever, UA can make out either way. For those that buy up to regular, they are getting the extra revenue earlier, but for those who end up in BE, they likely get the extra revenue (and then some) with checked bag fees since even standard carry-on rollers are subject to those (if elites are buying these fares though in relatively high numbers though....then yeah, that's an issue).
Yep. I have no way of proving this, but just looking at the way it was designed, I believe UA doesn't care if you book BE or not. One way they get extra revenue from a buy up, and the other they get ancillary revenue. I would think this outweighs the loss of buy-ups and change fees, which I wouldn't think people buying BE would do that often anyway.
The only way they lose money is if people book away. I still haven't seen a really logical argument for why a frequent customer would book away, unless they were forced by an employer to book BE. However, I'll note, anecdotally, that while I'm flying less this year than before, I've received several upgrades as a Gold, and also had an empty middle seat exit row several times. Over the last couple years, those were very very rare occurrences.