The End is Near
 

The end is near.

The rich get richer and get all the free tickets. We, the humble lot, gallantly step forward on our tired feet upon the worn carpet of many a plane after hours spent waiting in airport bars sipping cheap wine and wondering when – or if - we will ever get home. We ask in our most feeble voice if perhaps that exit row or an upgrade to a beer in an actual glass might come available. Meanwhile, the others, a privileged lot of wealthy credit card users stroll upon the plane with free first class tickets in hand. They are bound for Bangkok. And Sydney. And exotic points afar. They live in large mansions of tinted glass and groomed gardens and only come to the airport so as to clog the security lines with a slow strip tease of tacky jewelry. All this and they are flying for free. Because they can. Because they rack up 500,000 miles a year in affinity credit card charges. And could care less about paying the excess miles for “anytime” (extortion) awards.

The end is near because the wealthy are ruining for us what was once our one and only reward for the days upon days that we endure the LAX’s and LHR’s and NRT’s. We fly. They buy Prada. We get nothing. They get free seats. And they don’t deserve it. The rich are ruining it because they are ignorantly paying a premium for free tickets. As they can. And the airlines with their greedy promises of a glossy-shiny-world-for-your-loyalty-and-give-nothing-in-return programs are shuffling the cards unfairly and are just as much to blame. The people who actually fly are left with a lousy pair of twos at a stacked table of high rollers and crooked dealers.

Pity us the little folk who when trying to book awards to anywhere at anytime are left to realize that our loyalty, our pain in favoring an alliance, our convoluted routings to gain miles was really all for naught. Because the airlines quickly discovered that they could fill the free seats with affinity card users that are more than happy to pay 240,000 miles for a first class to Tokyo instead of 120,000. And while we try to keep up with actually flying for our miles - in the end we are left chasing our tail. We will always be outspend, outmiled, and outmaneuvered by armchair travelers who rarely fly, often spend, and take every free seat to everywhere you ever might want to go.

Of course, there is Halifax. This is United’s token spot of free ticket availability that seems to always come up in the “we have free seats to here” chart. I have been to Halifax. It is a nice place and all that. But I really want to take my girlfriend to Asia. Or to Europe. To hike grand mountains and eat exotic foods. Must I be forced to go to Halifax because the affinity card users don’t want to go there? Perhaps we should start a campaign to romanticize the virgin wonders of Nova Scotia and the exceptional shopping and dining of Halifax in an attempt to lure the affinity card users in thinking that this is the new “it” spot of the world. The phones would be ringing off the hook at United to get those free seats to Halifax leaving us in turn to maybe - by miracle - find a lowly business class ticket with only seven connections to Bangkok for which to use our miles at the “saver” rates. But I dream. As there is no Four Seasons or Aman resort in Halifax just yet to serve as bait.

I give you below a chart below of the “haves” and have not’s” of the mileage war. In order of the most privileged:

1. Actual Frequent Flyers who fly AND spend a few hundred thousand a year in affinity charges. (They actually deserve the free seats more than anyone but are far too willing to pay the high extortion rates for awards )
2. Any Frequent Flyer who resides in Halifax.
3. The wealthy Affinity Card users that never pay for flights but charge everything and spend like crazy. (They do not deserve free seats and the sad irony is that they can actually afford to buy them.)
4. The road warrior who racks up hundreds of thousands of miles in expensive full fare tickets but must wait three years in order to use them as it takes that long to get to the double the miles extortion rates that the airlines love you to use. (They should be 2nd In importance on this list)
5. The nice folks who fly twice a year and still write checks for their purchases. (They might as well walk to their destination as they are never going to get anything free from the airlines.)

I do not mean to come across as a frequent flying version of Che Guevara. And I really do not wish to eat the rich. I only wish to eat the airlines who, in the drive to build lofty returns for shareholders, forgot that they were airlines. But it is too late to turn back. The damage is done. The only course of action for them now is to offer standard “extortion” rates for miles to lure people like my friend Alan in California who charges close to a $1,000,000.00 annually on his United MasterCard and has never once paid for a ticket.

And don’t you dear friends find it rather funny that the airlines now refer to the high mileage awards as “standard” and the original and more appropriately rated awards as “savers?” Do you remember when there was only one tier? And it was not called “saver?” And do you really believe that they are holding an allocation of free seats for 1K’s or Platinum’s or Diamond’s or whatever bull crap name they want to give us? They are not. How many times have you tried to get a free ticket in business class…eventually gave up and bought a coach ticket…only to board the plane later and see that business class is empty? The “standard” (extortion) rewards are the only rewards. And they are force feeding them to us. And the affinity card users are paying it. This is why the end is near.

But perhaps the greatest aspect of a failed system within our fiercely competitive and capitalist society is that someone will inevitably see the wrong and make it right in effort to gain an edge. Thus, I have high hopes for Virgin America. Members of the program accrue miles based on dollars spent (it’s about time!) and award seats are available anytime on any flight if a seat is available for sale. The downfall is a lack of partners and the question as to whether they will link up programs with Virgin Atlantic for redemption. Let’s keep our fingers crossed and hope. Virgin America may be the last chance to bring back a level of fairness and sanity to a system gone haywire. To properly recognize those who buy airline tickets. To give us reward for bearing the hell that is now business travel. To give us an ounce of hope that the $5 Pringle chips I bought onboard after paying $800.00 to fly one-way to Minneapolis might amount to something one day. And that I just might get me and my baby two seats to the Maldives without feeling like a street beggar in Central Park East.

In the meantime…does anyone know of a nice hotel in Halifax?

I have redeemed seven transatlantic awards in 2007. All in business or first class, all at the "saver" rates.

:confused: With a little advanced planning and some schedule flexibility, I have always secured first or business class tickets for myself, wife and son. Not once mind you but many times across the Pacific and Atlantic.

Where even to begin?

Do you have any data on greater willingness of credit card users to spend more points for the same seats?

Not that it matters, since you seem to misunderstand the economics of award seats. Availability of capacity controlled seats is is driven by excess capacity that airlines don't expect to sell. As airline loads increase those seats become tougher. Willingness to spend double the miles to buy out of capacity controls doesn't mean fewer seats available at the lower mileage price.

To be sure, printing more miles means more competition for capacity controlled seats. But why does one class of program members deserve the seat more than another? (and this ignores even the fact that many airlines set aside award seats that only their elite level frequent flyers can redeem...)

'Credit card miles' are profitable to airlines, just as flying (sometimes) is, occasionally even more so. Members buy into a reward scheme either way, behave according to set rules, and have the same legitimate expectation to use their miles.

And geez.. It's almost surreal to suggest that frequent flyers are somehow society's "poor" and that in any kind of class struggle folks here on Flyertalk would be the revolutionaries left in control of the means of production after the materialist dialectic hurdles us towards a Trotskyite free award seat Utopia ("if only Snowball had won...").

Hi MIA!

Wow, that is 700,000 or so miles reddemed in one year! Very impressive! I bet a good deal of those were affinity card miles. Thus, you win the award as being part of the #1 group on my list. Of course, if you are from Halifax you are disqualified. :)

I think you miss the point, but if it helps we could ring for PremEx who has been known to call United and have them remove any non-flight miles that somehow creep into his UA account. :p

The truly wealthy people in this world do not give a rip about affinity cards. They could care less about free seats on a commercial airliner shared with a bunch of total strangers.

It was a nice post, though. :D

'07 has been a very good award redemption year for me. By year's end, we will have done three full family vacations (4 award seats per itin) using miles, plus a handful of other individual trips or freebies we've given to others to visit us. I'm doing one solo later this year - U.S. to Germany in F on LH.

The seats are there, you just need to know how/where to look. Yes, in some ways the game is a bit more difficult to play (especially at peak travel times), but that's more due to high revenue loads, not some mysterious cabal of really rich people who enjoy flying commercial just to hack you off.

Edited to add: Just doing some math here...my burn this year is 470,000 plus a handful of WN awards and a couple of DBCFREE's (United's VDB tickets). My earn has been somewhat lower on the air side (maybe 200k), but very high on the hotel side. I could pull the trigger on a couple of Marriott Travel Packages if I had to get more air miles...

Hey Gleff,

No, I don't no notin about no yield management or any high fulitin stuff like that. Me here is just a simple man who gets on planes and flies an airline to point a from point b and gets me some miles to use to go to one of them nice poster places the airlines always tell me I can go for free if I fly them. As a simple man I always thunk like my daddy taught me: airline points should be for people who fly. Credit card points should be for them fancy people that charge.

Trotsky? Wasn't he a center for the Red Wings?

I don't get it... if the "wealthy" are using their miles on "anytime/extortion" awards shouldn't you be thanking them for leaving the Saver inventory for you?:confused:

With that said, I haven't had any issues redeeming for transpacs with a little patience, flexibility, and planning.

Same here..

eyechip, consider that the only reason most people fly so much these days is because it's cheap to do so. There is a price to pay for those cheaper tickets which make it easier to earn all those miles... that price is that it costs more to get a free ticket, and availability is lower. If you want to regress 10 or 20 years when "discounted" transcon economy tickets cost $1000 instead of $250, then you'll find that the problem is even worse, namely that the rich can afford to fly often while the rest cannot.

Personally, I'd rather have cheaper airfares with higher redemption levels than regress to the "good old days" where flying was a luxury rather than a commodity.

Actually, I am now the one confused. Or maybe we all are. Because the airlines don't even know what business they are in at this point.

My point is simply this: That if the airlines went about as a business model of flying people, and thus justly rewarding those who fly instead of allowing rewards to those who just charge and never fly, we might find (as the people who fly) that we could get a free ticket without the pains and hassles (or patience and flexibility as you call it).

Which is why I am quite excited about Virgin America. They seem to be focused on the right way to reward flyers...revenue based mileage and free seats with any availaibility. Of course, they may well be prone to falling by the wayside. But for now I will enjoy knowing that my miles earned from flying are not going to be pit against a stacked deck of those with affinity cards.

Hmph. Methinks we're gettin' trolled. There's no way that someone who flies a minimum of 175k BIS per year - and probably a lot more than that - isn't already milking the hell out of the credit card game. I mean, you gotta use a card to buy those tickets, right? And buy all of the hotel rooms that go with that volume of travel??

I think eyechip already has a UA Platinum Visa for those 100k+ miles of UA purchases, an SPG Amex, maybe a Thank You Network card for the AA/CO purchases, and maybe a Marriott or HH credit card if he stays at either of those. Plus he's talking about int'l travel, so it wouldn't surprise me if there's a Diner's Club or a traditional Amex charge card in his wallet too.

He's a road warrior and he's found Flyertalk. There's no way he's not doing this. He's just havin' a little Friday evening fun with us.

True. I agree. I have no problem with cheap fares (though I rarely seem to benefit!). But on the whole I think you will find that this is not the problem with the FF programs. It is the affinity cards. 10 years ago, when fares were plenty cheap as well, it was simple and easy to get a free ticket to pretty much anywhere at anytime you wanted. But now the affinity cards have so clogged up the system that I (unlike the lucky few who have posted here) seem to never be able to fiind anything.

Also, in regards to the fares, I am quite happy to see Virgin America starting a program that is based on dollars spent on the ticket rather than just miles. Now that is fair fare!

If the airlines' sole business is to fly people around, there would be no rewards. Clearly their business is not only to fly people around, but to make it so that people prefer to fly around. Moreover, they still fly people around who redeem award tickets paid for with miles earned from affinity cards.

Or let me put it another way. The frequent flyer program of nearly every airline is actually a separate company. In most cases, it's a wholly-owned subsidiary of the airline, but it's managed entirely separately from the flying operations part of the company. Some airlines have actually spun off their FF programs into entirely separate companies, i.e. not subsidiaries. In other words, the airline is still entirely in the business of flying people around, although they allow people to pay with miles from an FF program instead of paying with cash. It is the FF programs, not the airlines specifically, that allow people to accrue miles for things other than flying. (Perhaps this is an academic point since, as mentioned, most FF programs are wholly owned by their parent airline... but IMHO it's an important distinction.)

Regardless, my point is that airlines don't have to offer any rewards. They offer them as perks for loyalty, sure, but they got along just fine 30 years ago without any FF programs. (In fact, they were probably better off back then.) In today's market, they offer FF programs to remain competitive with consumers who demand to get everything for nothing. Part of that includes offering miles for things other than flying, but the airline makes money off of that, too.

Remember that the airlines are in the business of making money, not of adhering to one and only one business model. If you don't like the way a particular airline conducts its business, the best remedy is to vote with your wallet and find an airline whose business meets with your approval.

Trolled? Whew..I haven't been accused of that since I lived in the Castro District in the early eighties!
:)

Yes, Amex points. Which I transfer to my CO program. But I still can't keep up. I would gladly love to see the affinity card program end in exchange for a simple mileage or revenue exchange on dollars spent or miles flown. It would leave the FF programs for the people who actually fly.

I mean let's open our eyes here...the airlines have ultimitly involved us all in one of the biggest shell games in history??

[QUOTE=cepheid;8212038]If the airlines' sole business is to fly people around, there would be no rewards.

This was what they did when the programs first originated. And it was the purpose of the programs at the start. To encourage people to fly.

It would be so refreshing today to see one of the airlines stop and say "hey...let's get back to focusing on our core business...flying people." What a concept.

Well, regardless of whether or not you're tweaking us, welcome to FT! Now that you're here, I think you'll find people who can help you with strategies to redeem your miles. I fly about half of your volume and have found - partly with the help of this board - that it's pretty easy to amass a huge cache of miles (and no, I don't spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on credit cards :)).

Check out the UA forum and the Star Alliance forum. Lots of good info in both... The one tip that I found here that has helped me a lot this year is to sign up for ANA's FF program. My balance there is 0 miles, but just by having an account I can search award availability across most of the Star Alliance. United doesn't allow you to do this - even if you hit 1K. So I use ANA to find my award seats, then use UA to actually book them.

There are other availability tools out there that can also help with Oneworld or Skyteam - search Travelbuzz or the AA/CO forums for more info.

Trust me - the award seats are out there waiting to be claimed.

This definitely crosses my mind. It's a primary reason I try to keep my overall earning and redemptions roughly in-line. Right now, I worry that I have too many hotel points - leaves me vulnerable to Category Creep if I continue to amass and don't start burning them off a bit.

Sorry, but that's just not true. 10 years ago fares were quite a bit higher when compared to the median per-capita income. There's no way in hell I could find a non-stop transcon for $200 or $250 back then.

You want to know what's clogging the system? It's not the affinity cards. It's the LCCs and the competition they generate. 10 years ago the only major viable LCC was Southwest (and ValuJet if you look back 15 years), and it operated in a fairly limited capacity... it was no match for the legacies overall, and they only competed with one another, which meant that price wars didn't really ever get out of control. Fast forward a few years when LCCs started booming and that is where you get the passenger influx... suddenly, flights were super-cheap and passengers were flocking to the LCCs. The legacies had to drop their prices to compete, and now the fares on many routes are driven by the LCCs, even for legacy carriers.

Now passengers could afford to fly not just on LCCs, but also on the legacies, and since legacies had more flexible and more generous loyalty mileage programs, all of these passengers could now redeem award travel on these flexible programs that frequently had vastly reduced traffic (from only-legacy customers). With the huge influx of low-cost passengers eating into the award travel, the loyalty programs had to change by increasing redemption levels and decreasing availability... that's just the only way they could remain viable as legacy carriers while still dropping fares low enough to compete with the LCCs.

Sorry, it's not the affinity cards that clog up the system. It's all the passengers who demand (and therefore get) low fares. When flying became a commodity that anyone could afford, that is when the system got clogged. The affinity cards are insignificant in comparison.

Shell games? Give me a break. You are in no way getting swindled, extorted, or gypped. You are getting not only the flight for which you paid, but points in a program that gives you stuff beyond that for which you paid (e.g. upgrades and free tickets). There is no deception involved except for the deception inherent in all marketing, namely in getting customers to believe that they are getting the best deal in the world. But a shell game? Puhleeze.

As I said, if all they cared about was just flying people, they could eliminate the rewards programs altogether and compete on amenities and pricing alone. Maybe that would be better, and maybe it would even lower costs since they could spend less money on loyalty programs and more money on improving the hard and soft product. But at the same time, loyalty programs are a fact of life today, whether it's for travel, for restaurants, for retailers, what-have-you. And loyalty programs give you things beyond that for which you paid. While it might be nice to see all loyalty programs eliminated in favor of spending that marketing money elsewhere (e.g. improving service), loyalty programs themselves serve a purpose as well, and people love the impression that they're getting something "extra" ... which they are.

So as I said, if you want an airline that focuses on the "core concept" and doesn't offer any FF program, vote with your wallet and go for it. I'm fairly satisfied with the system as it is. (And note that I am not a very frequent flyer, nor am I rich, nor do I even use affinity cards.)

On the assumption that Virgin America's eleVAte program works much like Virgin Blue's Velocity, the revenue model may not look so attractive after all. Sure earning is related to fare paid, but award cost is also related to available fares. Instead of double mileage anytime award you could find the last minute award costs 10 times one planned in advance.

If you want to see how FFers view this kind of program, check out the talk on FT about Virgin Blue Velocity and Air NZ Airpoints (which is what Velocity looked at before they launched).

These kind of programs work well for some flyers, but not so well for others.

Why do you keep "welcoming" the OP? :confused:

Take a look at his/her profile -- been here since August 2002! That's FIVE YEARS. Certainly not a newbie, unless he/she registered five years ago, then forgot all about FT until now. Perhaps the OP can clarify this point. Been mostly lurking for the last five years, perhaps? :eek:

Actually, the Four Points on Hollis isn't too bad, nor is the Westin a bit further up the harbour. I proposed to the wife at the Delta Barrington...scattered rose petals around the room, lit some candles...

Same with Aeroplan which has a scale of pricing for awards that pretty much matches AC's own categories of fares on each flight. Depending on inventory, an "anytime" award can be 50% to 400% more than the regular award cost.

Hi Kathy,

Thanks so much for your post. It reminded me why I have been registered for five years but have only made a few posts. It is because of responses like yours which make one feel that unless they are part of the 'clique" they do not belong here. It leaves me shaking my head and moving on to more important endeavors. Has the mile addiction now morphed to posting addiciton? Post every day or you are not part of the elite? You are right Kathy, I apologize for dropping by every once in a while. I will go elsewhere and lurk.

Regardless of the underlying merits of the argument, I found this to be one of the most interesting and amusing posts in some time. The original argument had me nodding my head and smiling, so I was kind of knocked over by the seeming vehemence of some of the responses.

Having said that, I recently took 35,000 old US Air miles (actually, these are old America West miles--I haven't flown US Air since it was P.S.A. (smile)--and booked a free round trip from Sacramento to Rome for next February (final destination: Sicily). Took me about 20 minutes to look at their on-line calendar and pick out dates that worked.

So despite my appreciation of the style in which the original argument was expressed, my most recent experience is quite different.

In the interests of full disclosure, some of those 35,000 points came from applying for a US Air credit card two or three years ago. However, I'm hardly a spender in the league of those referenced by the OP, and all of my credit card purchases have gone to Starwood for the past couple of years.

In conclusion, I'm perfectly happy to feel OP's anger at the benefits accrued by those over-the-top spenders, while trying my best to emulate them (smile).

Reading the opening post simply reminded me of a saying my Dad always quoted to me; "I complained because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet."

And therein lies the whole problem you're having finding award seats.

There's no such street as "Central Park East." That would be Fifth Avenue.

And WRT to whingeing about the paucity of cheap award F tickets, what part of supply v. demand don't you understand? :rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes::rolleyes:

Redemptions
 

eVIPS have been pretty easy this year. Just have to be flexible on flight times...

I said "In" not "On" Regardless, I thank you for reading some of my words. If not all.

Perhaps though you would consider commenting on something more relevant rather than completely arbitrary. But your being from St Louis leads me to assume that you wish to spout your great knowledge of a city based upon horse and buggy rides around Central Park. Were you wearing your Nikes and shorts?

Shouldnt we be more like thanking him for not being as prolific poster as we are blessed with now?

Surprised some here has actually tried to engage in some sort of dialogue:rolleyes:

mike

Epic! I love it :D

Just did awards trip from LGA through IAD to LHR, then LHR to LED, then MOW to NCE through LHR. Then back from NCE to LGA through LHR then IAD. Did it all on awards tickets. Yes, it was a lot of connecting and such. But I got to travel through Russia and then go to the South of France at the height of the summer travel season. If you plan ahead and are willing to make connections anyone who flies enough can use rewards without enormous affinity points.

I live in NYC and know many people who have AMEX Black. None of them fly commercial, rev or nonrev. So I don't think they or their extravagant purchasing habits are to blame.

Shoot me for attempting to be nice. I thought it was an amusing post, perhaps a trolling one, and I'm still not 100% convinced it's not. But if the OP has genuinely re-discovered FT after some time, maybe he'll be able to use it productively. Anybody who flies 175k+ miles a year shouldn't be bellyaching about rewards credit cards - he should be optimizing what's in his wallet and taking full advantage.

So I said, "Friend, can I have your shoes?":D

Hmmm, you seem to have misunderstood. I was simply pointing out to pinniped that you are NOT a newbie to FT. However, you seem to have interpreted this in some way that is contrary to what was intended. Intentional? :confused:

If those who participate in FFPs have complaints to voice about those FFPs, it is certainly their prerogative to do so and FT is certainly an appropriate place for it. Some will concur in the complaints and the reasoning offered in support of them; some will dissent; and some, like me here, will concur in part, dissent in part. The OP has sparked a lively discussion, and that in and of itself is surely worthwhile.

I don't like, and expect few of us do, changes to the game once it is under way that disadvantage us vis-a-vis the airlines whether through revision of redemption schedules, increased fees in connection with award travel, etc. Nor in general do most like those aspects of the game which seem to give others more generous rewards or relative advantages over them. Some complaints about these things have more merit than others, though.

The OP thinks it is wrong that not all RDM (nor all EQM) comes through actual flying, that instead a good percentage of miles come about through credit card use. Isn't "flying" the airlines core business, he asks, so what are they doing selling miles to credit card issuers to hand out to credit card users, who then turn around to redeem those miles for award travel. And as is so often the case, it is the piggish "rich," who didn't "earn" all their miles honestly through BIS flying, who sop up more than their fair share of award seats, in the forward cabins (where else?). Is it OK with the OP if the airlines bestow more RDM on those who buy full-fare tickets than on those flying on discounted ones, or does he believe that everyone on the same flight, whether in the very front or in the very back, no matter what they paid for their ticket, should deplane with the same amount of RDM for the undertaking?

I wonder if it occurs to the OP that just as he bemoans the advantages of the "rich," others may view the advantages he has over them as similarly unfair. The OP may pay no more for a UA coach seat than others, indeed sometimes less, yet sit an E+ seat by virtue of the elite status bestowed on him by the carrier while they are consigned to cramped E- minus ones. And though the OP may make it to the gate long after them, he will be invited to board ahead of them.

Does the OP, who presumably lets none of his RDM go to waste in the end, appreciate that to some extent he is getting more generous FFP benefits than he might otherwise were it not for "breakage," that is the miles that go unredeemed by "(t)he nice folks who fly twice a year and still write checks for their purchases," the ones he says "might as well walk to their destination as they are never going to get anything free from the airlines." Does his concern for those "nice folks" make him wish that the airlines would sell tickets at a cheaper price to those would take them sans miles, though it would eliminate a cost-shifting that works to his benefit?

I suppose it is a pretty small percentage of people who do not purchase their tickets with credit cards or have their tickets purchased for them by their employer. (If you try to pay with cash, you will get heightened scrutiny, won't you?) People substantially poorer than the OP (yes, I am assuming that few who are upper level elite on more than one carrier are among the poorest) are less likely to use credit cards, so they are helping to subsidize those of us who do and impose those costs on sellers of goods and services to all of us, including non-credit card users. So while he thinks his friend Alan from CA who charges close to $1M is being treated too generously given that he is not "honestly" earning all the RDM that comes to him, and then using them to redeem "standard" awards, the OP might be seen as overprivileged by others farther down the food chain than he.

(BTW, I trust the OP is not a 1K-lite, that is someone who did not obtain that exalted elite status entirely through BIS-earned EQM.)

I'm more with the OP as far as complaints about how the carriers handle award inventory than I am about the way they distribute miles.

No capacity controls? That sounds like a great program. Does anyone know if they have an affinity credit card for this program yet?

Oh, woe is me, United isn't giving you a $4,000 ticket for $500 now because people with oodles of miles are using them. Did you ever stop to think that normal fliers might be saying the same thing about you? I'm sure they talk to their parents and are amazed at days when they might have had a chance at a bulkhead or exit row or an upgrade. It's a little hypocritical for a 1K flier to be whining like this.

If the UA program isn't doing it for you, then change. If flying so many international flights isnt worth it, then get a different job. Those 'rich' that you're talking about DO pay for those tickets. They could easily get a cash back credit card and buy the tickets with the money. It sounds like you're just jealous for no good reason. You get worlds more benefits than the actual traveler, but yes, there are people who may be more important to United than you are. Suck it up.

As for UA reward availability, I went to Australia last year for thanksigving. I have NO UA status at all. None, nada, zip, and I was able to get a ticket in first no problem.