Originally Posted by
bocastephen
And they abandoned it after awhile, it was hugely unpopular - but then again Continental of that era cared and listened to their customers, AA of this era could care less and likes doing things just to screw with customers for sport, that comes from the Baldanza school that infused the company years back.
My memory, twenty years later, isn’t the greatest especially since I wasn’t a CO flyer at the time (even though OnePass was my first loyalty program ever), so I dove into the archives. The change to OnePass was introduced in 2003 for the 2004 qualifying year (
looooong FT thread).
And it stuck around until the 2010 year - here is
UA Insider’s announcement:
Hi Everyone, here's a sneak preview of our 2010 OnePass changes, which we'll be broadcasting later today
…
Full Elite Qualification is back. Effective Oct. 27, you’ll earn 100% Elite Qualification Miles and full Elite Qualification Points on discounted fares, regardless of where they’re purchased. To all of our loyal corporate travelers: message received
So clearly the nice “Continental that cared and listened to their customers” didn’t actually change it back until the UA merger.
But what it tells us is that some changes don’t always stick… UA/CO presumably figured that they weren’t going to be competitive with AA and Delta if they kept that rule. And so they gave up. AA, too, is motivated by money. If this was a huge problem for a lot of their frequent flyers, they probably wouldn’t do this.