Originally Posted by
FlyingBeanCounter
I suppose it did not exactly. I certainly could have gotten 1k again even at the 24k spend. After all the adjustments though i began to question how important the schedule really was for me. Sure, I liked flying to direct to most cities but little things started to get to me. Having a GS cut in at the last minute and take the upgrade for instance. Or the myriad delays I suffered. To be sure, this wasnt enough to be terminal on its own, but add in their zealous over estimating the worth of 1k and I began to wonder if there wasn't a better choice out there. Keep in mind that three years ago 24k would likely have netted a look at GS.
Fair enough, although I'd quibble with the last bit. If you're in a hub -- I'm guessing from the ability to fly nonstop to most cities -- I don't remember hearing about GS qualifying at the $24K level. Still, $24K is a lot of spending, no doubt.
Originally Posted by
FlyingBeanCounter
The irony here is I would have been 1k again this year had UA not come out with this nonsense. Its like the entire organization has a positive gift for doing something extremely tone deaf at exactly the wrong time. The message they sent to us in November 2019 was that fliers spending 15k a year were no longer worthy of being top tier elites. Then the market falls apart 3 months later when a large number of UA fliers are working on digesting that. Ironically I ended up going from a simple 1k to top tier on two airlines because my travel patterns changed.
Ah! That's what I failed to consider, and now it makes much more sense. I apologize. I can see how 1K looked to be unattainable / unworthy of being attained in November and easy to make now.
Originally Posted by
FlyingBeanCounter
All of this is noise though - UA is an inferior airline. The fact that they think 1k is the highest valued Elite status of all the other airlines is comical. I found 1k to be about 3/4 of what diamond has been. I have no experience with AA, but I suspect they treat their elites a bit better too.
I suspect that you will find life as a ExPlat or Diamond
in a UA hub is better than life as a 1K -- but you're connecting more. If you were in ATL, you might find that being a 1K was much better.
AUS-based, where only WN has a significant nonstop network, I choose UA because I can get upgrade certificates that I can clear in advance (I'm flexible) and they publish the inventory bucket so that I don't have to call and waste an agent's time to find them. I also get a significant CPU percentage -- last year it was over 70%; this year I'm at about 50% so far. I'm guessing that those may not have applied for you, though. I also have no intention of spending $18K to get status -- that was actually the #1 reason I was contemplating leaving UA before. 15K PQD on last year's UA was more expensive than 15K MQD on DL, because there was no way to get extra credit by booking the right partner flights.