espostor

From United's perspective, I think the profitability of the population of 1Ks runs across a far wider range (from "we hemorrhage valuable resources whenever we serve this person" to "this person contributes excellently to our profit margin, but they're not quite GS") than any of the other status levels, so this might be too broad a statement. Certainly there are some *very* profitable 1Ks that are not GS and United would be hurting itself were it to treat them as "second-class citizens."

Someone (more than one person, hopefully) at United is in charge of studying the profitability of 1Ks. I don't want to speculate on any upcoming overt changes to the service levels for 1Ks, but there are definitely subtle ways United can minimize "over-delivery of benefits for low-margin activity" and one of those ways is to focus "extra mile" type service on the most profitable folks as much as possible. With some training of key customer-facing folks, United could do this without eliminating any published benefits. I think it would be a smart move.