I have to admit last month on a whim I went to SFO from ORD - Sun 6 AM flight booked for 15k upgraded to once to C.
At T-16 changed to the 845 am flight to SFO - lost upgrade at once but was #1 on list with 16 seats empty (Widebody flight going to SFO on Sunday)
Got the upgrade 3 hrs prior to flight and went on a lie lat with good breakfast
I certainly got 5-6 cpm value - even economy prices were 450$ and bz was much more
Originally Posted by
tth6133
What kind of value? How much better than 1cpm on those domestic redemptions?
Shouldn't they think long and hard about keeping crediting their flights to UA? Or better yet, think about whether they should avoid UA flights in the first place (I understand some of them may not have a choice). DL at least offers a somewhat better product to keep their elites flying DL.
Originally Posted by
jsloan
Because people grumble about 30% increases but seem to live with them.
The inflation rate of the US dollar is completely immaterial to MileagePlus.
Not really; once you peg an RDM to 1.1c, then inflation in RDM must become similar to US$
30%
each year being ok as suggested is horrendous inflation - think about it - every 3 yrs prices in miles would double!
15 yrs ago I could go to SIN for 60k miles in C - now it is 250k miles = 300% inflation = about 15% a yr
@ 3% inflation it would have gone up by 60% = 100k awards
In fact now that they are dynamic and linked to price, hopefully inflation is less.
However, I focus on miles cost 3 ways -
1 - as a rebate on travel - as a Platinum I get 9% cash back on cash cost (as a 1k 11% rebate on OPM travel)
2 - as lost cash from using card = 2.625c lost cash (it used to be 1.75c when I was using the club card at 1.5x - cheaper than buying miles)
I almost never use the card now and have downgradd it to fee free. I still have a PresPlus card
3- transfer from Chase (5x free and from SUBs) - real cost 0.5c overall for this route
My average cost per UA mile was 1.2-1.5c overall each year based on my spreadsheet of spend and misc earn.
At that price 88k was about 1200$ with 50$ taxes to go to Asia; return was 1300 due to higher taxes = 2500 - not great but OK
At 250k miles it is 4k each way = 8k - I can buy tickets on almost any carrier at that price if I can plan my personal trips .
I don't care about OPM trips scheduled at last minute - that is a higher rebate earn potential
True that - it is a matter of time.
The banks buy them at 1c each (or perhaps even more - based on VFTW blog though I find it hard to believe.
Originally Posted by
RobOnLI
When you give out miles like candy (aka like a bank through credit cards), you have to massively increase redemptions to get more of them off your balance sheet. This will only continue one way and that's UP. -RM
The main issue is lack of excess inventory - see below - so the seats are sold for much more
Originally Posted by
WineCountryUA
Well behind the domestic competition
The days of nonsensical 5 cpm awards are long gone, only made sense when there was excess space, which is presently gone.
With 100,000 SUBs and 75K earnings for 1K/GS which were enough for OW TATL Business (typically going for $4-5K), it made no sense.
Miles should not be getting that much of a discount. Even at say 1.5 cpm , this is amounting to nearly 20% award rebates for higher elites
I'm sure this is not popular comment, miles need to pull their revenue rate under today's inventory conditions.
The varying rebate from 6-15% is meant to engender loyalty
- if purely based on single transactions each flight would be on a separate nonstop on different airlines
I look at status as rebates for loyalty spend - on UA mainly based on flights, while on DL and AA, overall loyalty to program not to flying
I think if they even fixed price in miles based on $ in a transparent manner, e.g., 1c for economy, 1.5c for premium and 2c for business based on ticket price, that would actually make people understand the value and increase focus on miles.
They could add a level for saver seats that are unlikely to sell.
At present you have an opaque currency of poor value
AF has huge price swings - EU for 50k vs 700k at times, where the cpm swings from 10c to 0.5c, but at least it has gems in the floor of the cowshed
UA as it stands is useless other than to the high spender - usually with OPM