I used to twist myself into a pretzel to fly *A and UA for work, with extra legs and such to get that booking over other auto-generated lower-cost bookings. I have stopped doing so. Flew to West Africa on Air France and besides drinking bottles of Laurent Perrier in the lounges at IAD and CDG, the meals were ridiculous compared to Polaris: amuse bouche, lobster or salmon app, full main, cheese course, trio of mini desserts. I slept through the breakfasts that were similarly plentiful.

I'm trying to keep at least Plat with UA to keep E+ seats for my family and (in theory) greater award availability, but UA is making it harder and harder for me to go out of my way to do so when I see threads like this. LH and ANA get me to where I need to go in Europe and Asia, in a much better fashion.