mobarak

Lots of interesting points and counter points here. Thank you for engaging. All major airlines have GPU (or equivalent) policies for a reason: those loyal flyers account for a large share of the airlines' business. So the key question is whether not letting GPUs clear within T-24 even when 20+ seats are open is a profit-maximizing strategy for united.

Let's think about the extremes just to make this point clearly:

At one extreme, selling all open Polaris seats to the highest bidders until the last minute, before allowing any GPUs to be redeemed, is not optimal because then GPUs become virtually worthless, and the loyalty unravels.

At the other extreme, I admit that clearing GPUs when there are only, say, 3 open seats is not optimal for united because they'd like to wait and see if someone buys a ticket last minute.

So the optimal strategy is somewhere in between these extremes. I'm only arguing that choosing to not allow GPU redemption when there are 20+open seats and trying to sell them, is not optimal strategy because it does not engender loyalty. It sounds like others feel differently