Originally Posted by
jsloan
UA has too much to lose, unless they remove the ability to search while not logged in.
Haven't they already done this? The mobile app has required login for a couple of years in order to do award searches, and the website now appears to be the same way.
Originally Posted by
Xerinax
This may have been inevitable, but was undoubtedly hastened as a result of all those travel bloggers who publish the best use for miles and ways to optimize the system otherwise. Even just reading through this thread there are several posts that discuss optimization tactics and there will definitely be more posts on favorable availability after the change as people find them in searches. It should be no surprise that the airlines have people whose job description includes trolling the internet to look for touted benefits. Do you really think they aren't going to see what people are finding and act over time to reduce it?
That's an interesting point. Maybe 15 years ago, the way they carried accumulated mileage liability on their books was a) assume that any account with less than 25k miles would never be redeemed, and b) for those above that amount, assume they'd be redeemed in 25k increments for domestic economy tickets, and value the liability at their marginal cost of operating such (which was something like $29/segment, IIRC). So, that's a fairly minimal valuation. I have no idea if their real expected cost any higher. And, it could be that that pattern of redemption really was representative of most award travel.
Fast forward to today, where there's a great amount of talk about partner award redemptions, especially in premium cabin. Those cost UA far more, since they have to pay cash to the partner (not at the revenue fare rate, but it's still a cash cost). Also, there's enough mileage earning going on through credit cards that Everyday awards might be used more often than they used to, and each of those has the potential of taking a seat that otherwise would have been sold at full fare. I think we've already seen the results of that happening, as Everyday awards on many routes are now far more than their historical 2x Saver cost.
Originally Posted by
jsloan
It's not so much a matter of being unpopular as being (a) impossible and (b) pointless. United doesn't need bloggers or FlyerTalk to tell it where people are finding the most value on their award tickets. All they have to do is do a very simple audit.
I think you're missing the point, or at least half of it. Even if UA didn't read FT or the bloggers, they'd still see the results of those in their internal data audits.