Originally Posted by Jumpgate
There was an interesting post on the UA board a while back about UGS. Essentially, only maybe 60% of UGS flyers are high-paying high-BIS miles flyers, the rest are "comped" by United for various reasons. Some without ever setting foot on a United plane!
I have two EVPs who are UGS, one of whom has never set foot on a UA aircraft (he flies on our corporate fleet in North America, BA to Europe, and Singapore or Cathay to Asia). UA gave (and continues to give) our corporate travel department a small supply of UGS memberships to gift. I believe this is why it's possible to be 1P and a UGS, although I admit I've not troubled myself to follow it that closely (most of my UA flying is RJ hops in/out/around IAD
-- and I'm not willing to buy up to Y/B just to get UGS in an RJ).
I've always been curious about whether US has or will have a super secret "ultra" elite ala United. I'm going to barely hit CP (or CP-FTD) this year, but as I've been flying weekly and often buying Y and B fares, by the end of the year I will have given US roughly $30K. I'm sure some of you heavy international last minute flyers are giving US probably $50K or more yearly ...
Several years ago, right before the Black Tuesday status mile debacle, I had given US north of $50k in a 12 month period, doing last minute international fares booking into full-Envoy with a corporate discount. I got CP and club comped, but did not get any extra attention until such time as I started faxing receipts of tickets of the same variety to CCY to prove a point about the status-mile debacle.
With that said, US does (or did) have a VIP flagging of some sort--I know a bunch of Senators and Reps have it in DC--there may be others. I don't know if HP continued this practice or not.