Originally Posted by greenpau

I always enjoy this annual thread - and especially new contributors and perspectives!

I have only ever been given one piece of direct, confirmed input from UA on this, which is supported by all the data and sound business sense:

Yield matters most.

Speculated often as CPM, but the profitability margin of each dollar spent matters. CPM is a crude metric and these days is likely far more sophisticated, spanning direct UA spend and direct revenue sources such as credit card income. Plainly put, spending $60k but all on P/Y Fares and a high number of segments won’t get you there and never will. UA uses different language around this - “frequently book fully refundable Premium Cabin fares”.

Also playing into this yield concept is if your cost to serve is high. It’s more squishy about what that means and how it’s calculated - but I can guarantee in the age of AI/ML then this is more nuanced and sophisticated than many years ago. The description above from another poster is so spot on - they are building and annually refining a data model.

As always, we shall see - but a “very high yield” traveler is still very much a customer they want to attract and retain.