I've only been to three PCs in my life - EWR, SEA and GUM, and quite frankly they didn't exactly impress me. When it comes to "food" and beverage offerings, they seemed very similar to the RCCs (I always had plenty of booze chits and don't drink much anyway).

That said, what I am looking for is usually just a reasonably quiet room with a comfortable seat, readily accessible power plug and preferably some decent coffee (and there both PCs and RCCs usually fail me completely). Actually, showers would sometimes be nice.

I have only been to the RCC at LGA and ORD. I thought both were very pleasant.

As far as food, outside of breakfast, it's very slim pickin's in the PC's, save for some crackers, a little industrial cheese and heavily-waxed apples...

I believe the issues of food prep (including obtaining & storage)

as well as the cleanup (not to mention the takeaways) are the

most likely negative elements in the equation

I don't expect much (but a little improvement would be nice)

In that case I look forward to continuing my diet...

Those industrial bagels and muffins that I seem to remember from some early morning visits to the SFO RCC weren't worth the calories. Fortunately, I usually get something a bit better/more substantial after I leave the club and board an aircraft (most of my trips are long haul and I only get domestic access via *G).

It would be nice if the PC/RCC folks took a look at the LH business class and Senator lounges in FRA/MUC. Nothing fancy, but pretty decent light snack/food options. Of course, AFAIK LH doesn't sell access to their lounges - you have to fly in a premium cabin or be *G to get access. Which probably makes the whole thing more affordable for them.

I had decent luck getting an exit row, AND I got a special "thank you for your business...if there is anything we can do to make your flight more enjoyable, please let us know" from the purser on both of my trans-Atlantic legs. The latter was quite surprising actually. The latter is not a real benefit of course, so I'm being a bit tongue-in-cheek, but I WAS surprised! (More than I got from Air China!)

I wish more LH fare classes were available for mileage upgrades....but that's a wish not an expectation.

More cost savings - lighter PAX = less fuel burn!

It seems that after reading through all the pages "most" CO flyers are relatively happy with the "new" benefits. It actually will neither improve nor detract from what I earned in terms of benefits this year if my flight patterns remain the same

I personally think the Pres Plat members are in for a rude awakening if they think they'll be invited in to the GS program with $30k in spend. You just have to look at the UA threads on qualifying to see how upset some people are.

The only real drag is that "top tier" will be 100K instead of 75K but this isn't necessarily a bad thing.

The UA forum is pretty much still in a lather though. I think there were a few malcontents that would love to see all of the CO plats end up less than the UA 1Ks upon merger completion.

Which will happen unless those CO Platinums are at 100K EQMs or 120 EQPs, just like next year's 1K qualification numbers.

The tiers are going to be the same for everyone, just like it should be.

I am not sure why some people, at least that is the impression I am getting, thinks elites from UA or CO will "trump" one other in the upgrade queue... I.E. 1K should trump ALL CO Plats in the upgrade queue, etc...

Simple as that, there will be four tiers on both airlines next year with the same qualification levels [25K/50K/75K/100K] and in 2012 when both program merges the elites in their respective tier and will be placed in the same place in the upgrade tier. So CO Plats that flies 100K+ and UA 1Ks will be placed in the same tier at the top.

I think what CO is doing right now with the tiers makes sense.... They effectively added in 1P+ in the UA MP program and Plat+ in the CO program.


For CO PPlats, CO has implied that the spend requirement will be determined to protect the exclusivity of the program... That is self-explanatory, IMO. It is obvious that the PPlat spend requirement is going to change to match the UA GS requirement and the majority current PPlats will be "dropped", since only the very high-revenue PPlats will be invited into the UA GS program.

I also expect to see UA dropping some GS members too to protect the exclusivity of the GS program when they merge GS and PPlat. However, the % of PPlats that will be dropped probably will be higher than the % of GS members that will be dropped since PPlat's requirements are much easier to achieve.

Is it really that easy to accumulate $30,000 in spending in a year? And if it is, doesn't that imply these are relatively high value customers worthy of recognition? Personally I won't ever qualify for that amount of spending but I'd think these types of customers would be worth "more" to a company than someone else who manages to fly 100K on less than $10,000 in spending.

UA GS spend requirement is much higer than PPlat and with GS you have to fly in full-fare tickets for the $$ to count towards to meeting the GS spend requirement. PPlat on the other hand is not a no biggie, but the $30K spend requirement counts all tickets, including those on WESTNL fares.

In some stations the GS spend requirement is as high as $75K, but in other stations it can be as low as $30-40K - i.e. MCI, ELP, regional cities, and in key competitor hubs like ATL/DTW/DFW to poach business from competitors - hence my "easier" statement.

Not saying $30K is easy and yes that is valuable for CO, but pales in comparison to UA GS on many levels.

I doubt that. The $30k initial threshold gave a rough idea as to where one needs to be... and is in line with what some have reported as sufficient for being invited for GS.

Why would an airline that is 50% larger, say, not have 50% more GSs?

Much easier? The UA requirements are murky, but there are more ways to qualify for GS.
Some have qualified with two transpacific round trips in Z, one year some were told they could re-qualify by flying 50k miles on fares B,Y or higher.
Let me add the occasional offers to fast track into GS... such as spend $12k over the next couple of months. See http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...mo-buy-gs.html

We shall see...

To protect the exclusivity of the program... The GS spend requirement apparently has increased. Right now there are ~20Kish GS [guess, based on some posts] and I am sure there are some PPlats who will qualify to be GS, but the combined airline will do something to ensure the # stays around 20Kish.. Might go up some, but only slightly... Having 40-50K GS members will devalue the program on some levels.

http://www.continental.com/web/en-US...lplatinum.aspx

Self Explanatory... The spend requirement is going to go up for 2012 qualification, no doubt.

Also, the spend tracking we can see in our profile will go away...