This is a HUGE negative for me. I book literally hundreds of flights every week, so it’s a pretty painful cut. As to why it was beneficial for United, people like me have an incentive to book on them over other carriers. Look at it like a commission. While we book a lot of one-way flights any way due to the way we travel, I would not book one ways over Roundtrip to get an extra $5, but I certainly will book 8 separate reservations for a group of passengers rather than putting all 8 of them on one ticket.
While who am I to tell United how to run their business, I cannot remember a positive change of late. Always negative. I also do not like how they usually try to cloak their cuts as being something that customers want. I noticed with the lounge surveys that they often twist the questions into something that you can see they will use later to suggest that people do not want food in the clubs etc