That sounds like UA-speak to me.

One can get :-: status by purchasing F/J/Y tickets for others when logged in to their account.

Yes, 120 hours.

LOL...yeah...somebody suggest this for CO *s.
Just what we need in the onepass forum...more wars about whether or not the EUA process is rigged...

How do I get the * credit if I'm logged into their account?

A tiny grammar fix:

One can get *status by purchasing F/J/Y tickets for others when logged in to their account.

Should be:

One can obtain * status by purchasing F/J/Y class tickets for others while logged into one's account.

The 'unofficial' qualification I heard of from someone at CO was that *'s were the top 10% of customers dollar wise on a rolling 3 month basis. People are added and dropped routionely.

Note that this was a couple of years ago and it was then intended for employees to be able to identify customers who were important to CO's fiscal condition and be especially nice to them and help them if they needed it.

That makes sense in theory, but 10% seems a bit high, not even that exclusive.

If you can't get a glimpse of the passenger manifest, the (relatively) new boarding pass scanners at the gate will show "STAR" when it flashes your name. I generally spend $25k - $50k/year on CO, and have been CO* for the last few. I don't think $25k is generally enough to get it, and $50k seems more than sufficient. It seems to get me a touch more courtesy "Thank you for flying with us, Mr. CO_1mm," but that's about it that I can tell, and I think that's the point. As a revenue-based qualification (I suspect top 1%, rather than top 10%), it's hard to set firm benefits since people will go in and out of the pool, and you want some consistency of service ("No, this isn't your cart this week, Mr. CO_1mm, you were on a 'W' fare..."). Better to leave it as a relatively undefined benefit.

Why not make it 30%, it means absolutely NOTHING to anyone at CO!

Funny-because UAGS means so much to everyone, and CO* just means 1-800-we-dont-care hangs up quicker on you!

I think the $ threshold is probably lower than $25k. I've been a CO* for around two years now. I don't know exactly how much I've spent, but I only travel domestically, and only one or twice have booked F. If I book 35 tickets a year at $550/ticket that's only $19,250. I'm sure my average ticket is actually under $550 as well.

I can confirm this line of thinking re: total spend. I have been CO* for a number of years and, while I am a Platinum who spends a lot, I doubt it is $25K/year. The majority of my fares, however, are First, BusinessFirst, Y or B.

In regards to "special treatment", I do have a similar experience to one of the other posters. I was going BOS-CLE-SFO when a storm came in and delayed my flight a few hours such that I was going to miss my connection - the last of the night. When I got to the President's Club, the agent told me that CO had automatically re-booked me in F on a United, non-stop from BOS-SFO. When I told the agent that I was terribly grateful for that level of service, she said, "We try to do that for our Co-Stars in these situations...".

Also, my friend is a senior manager at CO and I recall him telling me that executive management gave a stat showing that CO*'s were responsible X% of their overall revenue - that X% was significant. I can't recall what it was, but I will try to dig the number up.

Sounds to me like CO* could be defined as "customers who generate 10% of revenue" (sorted desc by revenue/customer, of course) instead of "top 10% of customers by revenue". The former is obviously a much smaller group than the latter.

This makes more sense. Going off of a basic pareto analysis (aka the 80/20 rule), then 10% of revenue is probably <<1% of customers.

okcitychris or chrisjur, I asked this way above but maybe you could be a datapoint.

I Posted:
" One question I always have had, say you have 10-15 employees doing travel in the same company, if a few are spending lots but the others aren't do the less traveled on CO get the same * status because of common affiliation with the same company/billing address?"

Do others in your company also travel, any chance its also based on group purchases from a common theme such as a Comapny all work for even though they all purchase their own individual travel?

Just as an additional data point, I've noticed on the manifest and on the boarding scanner that it has a * next to my name.

I have not noticed any difference in treatment, but I've not had any upset schedules or delays either (which I like to think is part of the proper planning process for your trips).

If I were to request special treatment for this, I would request that they actually remember to put the requested lemon in the cranapple juice, but I'm easy to please......

As for spend, about 35K per yer, all domestic (IAH - East Coast & IAH - West Coast) usually all on Y-Ups, B-Ups and the occasional M-Ups (can you believe that you can snag a confirmed first IAH-SFO r/t for $517 all-in a week in advance.....).