Originally Posted by
spartacusmcfly
The reason you're so interesting is UA is basically challenging you to leave. They're saying, you don't have many other choices, so we think you'll stay. If your route is London, who else can offer $450 RTs? Not the LCCs as that's too low for them to make money on such a long route. Not the ULCCs, as they're dropping like flies. Only UA can offer such fares because their corporate sales in J allow the route to be profitable.
Once again, FTer's seem to take these things far more personally than the airlines intend them. UA isn't "challenging" anyone. I'm sure they are hoping the existing loyal low fare flyers foreign-based flyers will stay loyal, but they are certainly well aware that a number will leave and are willing to accept some loses and have factored that into the change. Only UA will know if the loses were within the ballpark of their expectations. If they follow-up with changes next year that loosen the requirements, it's pretty safe to assume they guessed wrong. The lower fare flyers who don't fly enough to earn status will likely continue to do so and they constitute a significant percentage of the passengers on these flights. By the way, DL still has an MQD exemption for foreign address holders and still uses miles (MQM's) for qualification for 2020. So they would be a rather obvious choice to switch to for those low fare foreign-based flyers looking for someplace else to earn status.