Originally Posted by chrisl137

That was the story of my life when I was flying primarily UA for business travel - enough PQD for Plat, but stuck halfway between Silver and Gold on miles. UA is changing next year to be almost entirely spend based and it sounds like E+ and F buyups will count in that. $5K=silver, $10K=gold, $15K=Plat, $24K=1K, with some discounts for flying a lot of segments. Silver on UA is still a fairly big improvement over general member (especially IRROPS), but you can get largely the same benefits as Gold for the price of the explorer card ($95) and an E+ subscription ($600 for lower 48 states only). Free upgrades don't really exist on UA until you get to 1K, and even they seem to have trouble getting them. I did the CC+E+ sub one year when I expired from Silver and it kept me fairly comfortable while I worked back up. The E+ sub is for a year from date of purchase, so if you go UA, it's best to buy it right when you buy your first flight and then use it to move to E+ immediately (it goes into effect immediately).

I'm going to expire out of UA silver this year (I went for AS MVPG and UA nothing this year instead of MVP +Silver) so I'm considering the same issues. Being LAX based it's pretty easy to just fly whoever works for my schedule