Darlox

I lurk here on FT a lot, and there are quite a few active threads right now regarding various problems, oddities, and dissatisfaction with UA's seat availability and pricing, particularly on premium cabin Int'l routes. Now, a month into 2019, I look at my upcoming travel (business and personal) and note that not very much of it at all, is on UA. So I started digging deeper into the why of that, out of a lot of curiosity, and went back to re-search for flights. My travel patterns alone obviously don't point to a trend in UA's business overall, but there are certainly a few patterns that seem to be emerging:

1) UA is no longer trying to compete (or even match) Business Class fares from most cities, at least to Asia. I have upcoming travel in late-winter & spring to TPE and SIN (separate trips). The former is on BR. The latter is on AC+SQ. For any dates within 2 weeks of either trip, UA is consistently $600-$2000 more expensive than other *A partners, and that's even in cases where UA is a connection and the other airline is nonstop. That also includes options on NH, which is in a JV partnership with UA for TPAC... My travel patterns this time of year have been relatively consistent for the last 3-4 years, and this is the first time in that timeframe where UA wasn't either price-matched or cheaper than the alternatives.

2) For leisure travel, to Asia and South America, award ticket availability heavily favors partners. For most Asian destinations, the only Business Class seats available are "Everyday" awards, priced at 175,000 points each-way. However, there's plenty of partner J space available at 80-90k! UA jacked the price of partner awards from 70k-80k to discourage partner redemptions... but then has jiggered its own award space in such a way that partner redemptions are the only reasonably-priced options! This seems to fly pretty hard into the face of their originally-stated goal of encouraging people to stay on UA metal. (And it's not like we're talking about full planes... for plenty of dates only 3-4 weeks away in Feb/March, there's lots of flights with P9 / I0.)

3) The criteria for making 1K (and thus earning GPUs) has continued to tighten. We're past the Jan 31 cutoff for the new program year, and this year's threshold is $15k PQD. In theory, this tightening should be winnowing away the ranks of 1Ks, thus making the category more exclusive, and thus making the GPUs less of a drain on UA's inventory. And yet, even aside from the PZ0 availability "error" currently occurring, upgrade space is scarcer than ever, meaning they're issuing fewer GPUs even as they make them all but impossible to actually use.

It's difficult to fathom what strategy is in play here, that I can look <2 weeks out and see mid-week SFO-TPE sitting at Z9/P6, and yet cash-on-the-barrel, connecting flights from West Coast gateways like SEA, LAX or YVR are anywhere from $400-$1000 less expensive on AC, BR or NH. AND there's no upgrade space (PZ0), and no award space available for <175k points.

Are corporate sales and Polaris so strong that they're actually selling all of these tickets close-in at exorbitant prices?? Are they just removing all advance availability and close-in or battlefield upgrading people who chose to waitlist, rather than releasing the inventory in advance? Or has someone in Revenue Mgmt just gotten approval to try something new, and we'll have to see if this bites them in the butt, in a few quarters...?

I guess I'm in the minority in that I'm a small business traveler, so I'll never benefit from a corporate contract. But I have to imagine that if I'm buying J tix on other airlines because of this stuff, others have to be doing the same...? At this rate, I'll be lucky to make Gold on UA next year, much less 1k, if their pricing continues to be so out-of-whack, and I can never confirm an upgrade! (Not that I guess it matters... thank goodness for MM status??) Strange to be in a position where I'm no longer actively booking-away from UA, as I did in past years due to merger issues, service quality, etc... and finally when I wouldn't mind flying UA, they've implemented some (to me) incomprehensible strategy that makes it excessively expensive, unpalatable, or both, to actually book on them! I'm literally at a loss to figure out why, unless my travel patterns are just completely out of whack, vis-a-vis their target market.