This is going to impact business travelers the most, right? Isn't Tilton just pointing a loaded gun at his head?

Also - any word on if 1P and 1K will be *exempt* from this?

Is UA getting into the hotel business or something? Lots of airport hotels must be cheering.

Hmmm...Maybe this is why the RCC matrons have been reportedly surly toward FTers doing MRs. Maybe they knew this was coming. I don't understand how they can get away with this.

How? This is a fare rule. Elites have never been exempt from fare rules.

Ugh.

Wow. I can't imagine. I rarely stay in any city more than a day or two because 99% of my travel is for biz. I'll have to move to another airline even if it means less convenient travel schedules/routes (I'm from SFO). It's a spectacularly bad decision.

And I bet UA wants you to book your hotel stay through .bomb too.

Highly doubtful. When have top tier flyers ever been given discounted fares (not talkin' upgrades or extra allotments in steerage for awards)? \

This really, really sucks. UA is giving the middle finger again to business travellers, as they perceive business travel as being inelastic on the demand side. Which isn't necessarily true.

How many business people, who *have* to fly for work, will now *have* to figure out how some technologies may better serve them (e.g., starting to use videoconferencing, etc.) so they don't have to fly at all anymore - or they fly a lot less; it would really be a brute force method of technology adoption. We've already seen it to some degree, but I have to wonder if this isn't going to further exacerbate the airlines' already precarious situation.

Will

Just to be clear - they won't not fly you out the same day - you will just have to pay more!

Get away with what? The rule change? Or the RCC matrons being surly?

If it's the rule change -- why wouldn't they get away with it? For better or worse, it's their airline, so they make the rules.

In one of the 2007 quarterly earnings calls, one of the UA execs said that UA would be aggressively making changes to "limit overdelivery on low-margin activity." The ending of the 500-mile minimum, the change to the rules about VDB credit vouchers, and this change all seem to be attempts to do that. They are all smart business decisions.

You will still be able to buy tickets with no minimum stay, they will just cost more. Businesses for whom it makes sense to pay the higher price will pay it. Mileage runners (of which I am one) won't. That's not a bad thing for the bottom line at all.

That's not how I read it...

That would be the biggest blunder ever. Seriously, can that possibly be?? They would lose all of their business travelers overnight.

From the article teaser (emphasis mine):

You'll definitely be able to purchase a same-day turn r/t. It might be from a higher fare bucket, or two expensive one-ways, but you'll be able to do it.

It can't possibly be. Pay more, that's all.

That better be the case. Otherwise I could not fly them anymore.

But how much more than the current $1200 B fare from LAX-SFO get?