Originally Posted by
physioprof
This can be a huge benefit. If you conservatively allocate a half-hour saved each trip out of EWR (which is reasonable since you can't plan time of departure for the airport on the basis of median wait time; it has to be somewhere near maximum or you'll miss half your flights), and you make twenty trips per year that's ten hours. For a high-end NYC professional, who can bill at $2000 per hour, that can be worth $20,000. And if you travel a lot in business/first with a companion, forced saver award availability can also be worth many thousands of dollars (even tens, if lots of international travel).
My family and I have barely used cash to pay for a vacation in years. The wife and kids are currently in China, where they flew in Polaris style thanks to a cheap fare + 6 GPUs. I'll be joining them saturday or perhaps later (due to free changes to reward tickets) on a first class Air China / United itinerary... all on "saver" fares. I estimate that we get roughly $50,000 in "premium travel" value / year as a result of the loyalty. For me, being based in CLE there aren't many other airlines I could use that would get me the same bang for buck in terms of perks.
A few days ago, I was transferring via IAD and got to skip the moon buggy due to a nice Mercedes transfer.
As far as the perks I get from GS, I am quite happy. Yes, there are areas for improvement*, but as far as United goes... it is as good as it gets.
*Pet peeve is that GS is effectively boarding group 3, after the loads of wheelchairs + strollers etc. Would make more sense to let the travel ninjas aka GS board first. We'd be out of the way, settled and sipping a bloody mary.