Originally Posted by
dilanesp
Another way of putting your point is that they basically don't want to give out an international upgrade to a casual flyer. They don't mind giving them out to their highest volume customers occasionally, and the high price of Standard Awards reflects that.
I don't, by the way, disagree that the number of Saver upgrades might now be less than needed to maintain FF goodwill. That's certainly possible. But my post describes the playing field we are playing on.
Even in the case of the highest-value flyers, I'm thinking we may have had a nomenclature shift here. Is MP a "Loyalty Program" or a "Rewards Program"?? If it's a "rewards program", then well... we are where we are. It's just another in a giant market of marketing scams with terrible "rewards".
But if it's a "loyalty program", then it's seriously out of whack. The purpose of "loyalty" was to incentivize people to choose UA over other carriers, with the promise of receiving the benefits of that loyalty down the road. FF programs started out as, and still ostensibly are (at least on the major legacy carriers) loyalty programs. Hence my confusion about a loyalty program that seems to more strongly incentivize using other carriers!!! Maybe I'm just behind the times... loyalty is dead, long live the transactional customer!!