I am at the risk of losing my 1K next year and I have been debating whether to go for it through mileage runs like I did last year. This really helped me decide against it.
I am one of those people who spend more time managing my frequent flyer miles than investments. My logic is simple: I know my returns with my miles (i.e. because of award charts) but I don't know how the market will behave. I mostly stopped flying on WN when they RR 2.0 came out because of variable pricing. So, without knowing my returns for UA miles, why try so hard to get them?
Now, I wonder how UA will calculated / allocate domestic connection legs for *A connections. For a while, it was really bad. For example, there can be tons of *A TPAC award flights out of SFO/LAX but there is none getting you to SFO/LAX.
You wonder what is next....