Originally Posted by
halls120
During my last year as a 1K, my CPU percentage dropped like a rock. I saw the writing on the wall and stopped my quest to always fly UA in order to maintain 1K. Now, when I do fly UA, I buy discount F domestically, and use miles and cash internationally. Oh, and I spend about 60% of what I used to spend on UA. Thanks to SMI/J, I fly more on AA and DL than I ever did prior to the merger.
+1 There are two related questions, (1) how much+$$$ (or +$) does UA get for selling the F seat vs holding it back for possible sale as F and then giving it as a CPU, vs. (2) the annoyance and anger that comes UA's way when CPU turns out to be a sham, along with the resulting loss of business (-$$$ or -$).
I many be an extreme example, but in my old Job I flew on probably 90% last minute tickets, but I could not pay for F by company policy. I could pay $1800+ to fly SFO-DTW RT in Y, but I could not pay $2000 to fly in F. And doing a trip or two a week, shelling out a few hundred bucks each time for upgrade certs (F pricing was always much higher on every airline) was just not in the cards.
I went UA > TWA > AA > CO/NW > UA as primary carrier. Why? Well TWA upgraded me, UA did not, and when AA took over TWA and I was back in the back of the bus, CO/NW upgraded me, and when CO started making F $100 bucks higher than Y, so there were few CPUs, well I went back to United.
There is a point where making comp upgrades too scarce,
combined in UA's case with rubbing peoples noises in it, costs valuable traffic to other (better airlines). This was part of my reason for leaving United (even when as now I pay for F on longer flights) I have a legitimate shot at upgrades on DL as a PLT, I don't have any shot for an upgrade on UA, YMMV. It is my business judgement that United has gone too far down the road of getting as much crack (TOD revenue) as possible, and it is part of by UA overall has trailed other airlines in revenue metrics. Others may disagree.