Originally Posted by
jsloan
I’m quite aware. I found PZ earlier this year on a TATL trip. It look longer than usual, but I still flew up front.
The key, as always, is extreme flexibility — I was searching nearly every UA flight over the pond. I’ll do the same thing next year. If I can’t fly up front, I won’t go. However, UA remains the lowest-cost carrier for me domestically — where F is rarely worth paying for — due to free E+.
Originally Posted by
Lux Flyer
And this is what people continue to ignore about PPs (and GUCs/SWUs on DL/AA). They are space available upgrade instruments, and that comes with all the pluses and minuses of doing anything on a space available basis. Namely if you're flexible and can work your schedule around the space, they work great. If you're committed to a specific route or dates, well that's not going to be great for usage. Chances are the same reason you want that route/date, there are other people wanting that route/date, and have already grabbed the space, or just bought the seats outright .Space available anything requires flexibility. Airline employees manage to figure it out/accept it (and yes, every day they are finding their way into Polaris cabins when seats still go out empty, just probably not on the flights most people are looking at).
If I'm reading correctly, this is an argument that benefits haven't been diluted, i.e. because +P can still clear into open PZ, they still hold their worth. And if I am reading that correctly — hope I'm not coming in too hot here — meh. You are the immaculate informed consumer when it comes to specifics, but on the general point, I can't help but think this is like boiling a frog (guess who's the frog), and the larger moral is being missed.
The point of all this griping is that upgrades have gradually but significantly become more difficult to use. And now that they are, the instruments aren't worth as much. In the past, if you did a bit of searching and had a few days' flexibility, you could usually find open upgrade space, and if you simply couldn't flex on schedule, waitlisting with top status panned out a reasonably high percentage of the time. Now if you waitlist, you're dead. You might even be tenth "dead" out of twenty. And if you do shift your dates/destinations to make it work, you have to go >500mi away from your intended origin/destination, move your flights by multiple weeks, or maybe both. This has been a slow diminution of benefits, but it is a definite one, and by now a meaningful one.
Bottom line: we've already hit or passed the point at which status is not worth stretching for, excepting rare cases. If they hike the requirements (which I do expect they'll do, as they tried before the pandemic), those cases are going to be even more rare.