There are two separate questions here -- miles and status.

Miles are clearly not on the way out. It's a great side business for the airlines.

Status, on the other hand, is what I value most. It gets me the first class upgrades, the preferred seating, avoids the hassle at times through airport security lines, and gets me preferred checkin.

Status will ultimately change in some fashion, I would guess. Miles flown are a crude measure of the value of a customer to an airline. A 100,000 mile flyer might spend $2,000 or $40,000 (or if it's all international paid F, $80,000).

Those customers are obviously not all worth the same to each airline. As airlines get better at distinguishing their customers, they will certainly treat each group differently (and ultimately, perhaps, each individual customer differently).

However, the crude tool that US is using -- no status, no standby, no residual value for unused non-refundable tickets -- seems to be a lose-lose.

Obviously US thinks they'll gain. I think they would gain with less of a blunt instrument.

This version means that even their Chairman's Preferred travlers under the new regime (100,000 miles on full fare) will be S.O.L. when purchasing a leisure ticket for their family. Talk about ticking off those best customers!

You would expect an airline to move their recognition and status -- maybe make it revenue based (reach a threshold of spending, earn status).

This is just clumsy and clunky.

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"Would you convey my compliments to the purist who reads your proofs and tell him or her that I write in a sort of broken-down patois which is something like the way a Swiss waiter talks, and that when I split an
infinitive, d*** it, I split it so that it will stay split."
- Raymond Chandler, to the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, 1947

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