Not sure what to make of this. At first, I thought--that's mid-tier status for $400. Shocking when others spend up to thousands of dollars for that. Then again, status is of no use if you don't need it. If you're going to fork $400, you'd better have a use for it. In which case, I suppose you'd keep flying United, and who knows, even renew your status the hard way.

I find the idea of 3P status as a teaser interesting. I guess that's what United envisioned last year with the ability to nominate a 3P. They did get disappointed though, when they found out a bunch of folks simply got their 3P status renewed by their sponsor, instead of attaining a higher status on their own.

Overall, I selfishly don't care much as a 1K I probably wouldn't be too happy if I were 1P though.