<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by dream7:
Maybe I am dense, but I don’t understand why an airline would favor this. Lets look at two frequent flyers:
Frequent Flyer 001 – has 200,000 miles in his account, all from flights and flight bonuses
Frequent Flyer 002 – has 250,000 miles in his account, 200,000 from flights and flight bonuses, and 50,000 from partner/affinity miles.
Why would an airline favor 001 over 002? Don’t the airlines sell the partner/affinity miles to hotels, phone companies, credit card companies, etc? If so, it should be a profit source for the airline, not a reason to downgrade that frequent flyer.
As Denzel Washington said in the movie Philadelphia, would someone please explain this to me like I am a four year old.</font>
I get the sense PremEx is mainly comparing Flyer 1: a 1P with United with 200,000 flight miles vs. Flyer 2: a non-status member with 200,000 miles, mostly acquired from other sources. I can see how Flyer 1 would get preferential treatment, both because of status and the fact that he/she has spent a great deal of time on UA flights.
In your scenario, I would think there would be no different in treatment. If your Flyer 1 and Flyer 2 held the same current status (which is obviously a big factor), I doubt UA would punish Flyer 2 for taking advantage of credit card, dining, and other bonus miles.
Seems like if United was adversely affected by those other mileage sources, they'd discontinue the programs. We know they aren't adversely affected though: they make a profit when you use the UA Visa or an iDine restaurant.