Originally Posted by
ericjenrique
What do you think elite status will be? The pessimist in me worries that elite 50/100 k will lean more toward Free Spirit. Status based on fares spent instead of mileage flown and no premium seating.
My question to all you elites: Based on the merger, will you continue to organically hit elite status this year by flying mileage runs, or, just wait and see if there will be another status match at the end of the year?
I will hit the 20k on F9 no problem this year, don't need mileage runs to do it in normal business conditions. I took one extra trip to MIA last year and got a credit card to make sure I got it and that was with biz travel mostly dark for half a year. However, it is really hard to hit 50k on them, especially flying out of DEN where there are no really long hauls to make. If they make it 50k or spend 2k to get the most important benefits then I'll stop making an effort to use F9 and mostly fly WN/UA instead.
My sense is that they will keep the F9 elite status chart because both have virtually no elites on most flights. Outside of holiday times UA flights out of DEN seem to be 40-50% elites. I have Silver and the plane is 25% boarded by the time I get on. F9 is maybe 4 or 5 people even with the status match efforts. I just can't see them doing something to reduce those elites as they clearly want more of them or else they wouldn't do the status matches.