+1. As someone mentioned in an earlier post, all airline programs are equally bad nowadays. GOOD. Let's forget about loyalty programs and fly according to OUR need (price, schedule, service).

There are airlines with bad FFP programs but excellent hard and soft product (SQ for example). PMUA bad product but great FFP.

And there are airlines good at neither, and can only survive if their prices are significantly lower than others.

Well, maybe for now, but have you been reading the threads about disappearing award inventory? This is also only Act One of a multi-act play. Will the Deltification of the award pricing be Act Two or Act Five? Hmmm!

Bottom line - elites at any level just cannot trust UA any more.

Nope. That would be BETTER than Silver. I have a good friend who has the Presidential Plus card and plans on getting the E+ membership for next year. So my friend, who rarely flies UA/CO, will get 2 free bags, E+ from booking, UC access, and Premier Access, and Silvers, who show loyalty to the airline will get...?? :rolleyes:

Are you implying that by flying 25k, one necessarily has made a conscious choice to be loyal to one program? I would argure that while in many cases, this is true, it is not a given. Examples would be a consultant who flys 100k miles equally divided between 4 airlines could be silver on them all, and loyal to noe, a govt flyer or other contract captive flyer, a hub/route captive flyer.

On the other hand, a decision to purchase E+ access and pay a fee to use the most expensive affinity card, on the other hand has made a committment to be loyal, even if they don't fly often. Loyalty and quantity are not the same thing. One can be the most loyal flyer in the world and fly only 2 flights a year, thus making them non-statused, while one with zero brand loyalty can have status based on volumes.

Your friend is also dropping north of $800 before taking a single flight. That's a profitable customer.

Does the $395 go to Continental or Chase? Regardless, he has the card for everything else in the card; nothing to do with the affinity to Continental. The card has great benefits, including no foreign transaction fee, as well as great travel insurance, car rental coverage... If not the PPlus card, he'd have an even more expensive card. But a nice bonus is the 2 bags and the UC membership.

Gov't contract flyers can still work loyalty into the equation and get on their preferred airline - at least to/from Baltimore/Washington area. I gave UA a lot of business that way.

Let's look at it this way - would UA rather have at least 25K worth of business, or none of it? Contracts an always be revisited. Businesses and other organizations can align their programs with their needs. If a lot of employees are 2Ps and check 2 bags, that second bag fee adds cost and may cause another look.

I wouldn't necessarily go that far.

I have 3 cards 2 MP, one with RCC access, plus a CO card. I'm looking at dumping 2 of them now. I'll probably keep the RCC card due to the wide access to *A lounges and reciprocity with US, not necessarily because I'll be on UA. As it stands now, I'm looking at diverting a lot of business AWAY from UA despite carrying a high fee card.

I don't see how having a PP card plus paying the E+ fee makes one more loyal than someone who would fly 25-49k miles on UA. It just means the person sees a better value in that than paying for every little thing as they go. It gets UA more short term cash, but doesn't necessarily mean loyalty.

Of course, since $MI/J is in charge now, he values short term cash more than long term loyalty anyway.

It still irks me that UA hasn't increased the benefits on the RCC Club Visa to match the PC one. Maybe they'll merge, but I'm paying the same fee for the card. Same airline. It'd be nice to have the same perks.

Same holding company, still not yet same airline -- that will occur in early 2012.

There are two possible conditions, and four possible combinations; a passenger can be:

• Loyal and profitable
• Loyal and unprofitable
• Not loyal and profitable
• Not loyal and unprofitable

Why should a loyal and unprofitable customer expect the same benefits as a loyal and profitable customer, and why is it so bad to try and attract more not loyal but profitable customers? If all you attract are unprofitable customers, the business will soon be out of business, no matter how loyal they are. Loyalty is not some panacea that provides cash-flow.

Along the same lines, the changes UA is making will be good for some FTers and bad for others.

I've concluded they will generally be bad for Mrs. Fredd and me, and as leisure flyers we may spend more of our vacation money in other ways. Yet even if thousands of similar leisure flyers do the same it may not negatively impact UA's bottom line at all.

We've been "loyal" to UA right through Ch 11 when we thought there was a good chance of losing our accumulated miles. If UA does remain profitable, the good news in all this is that we should be able to burn those miles, depending on inventory availability.

Well, if UA is selling their fares at a loss, there's going to be an issue of profitability whether one is loyal or not.

The problem is that you're treating all of them same. There are some that can qualify cheaply for elite, and others that spend a lot of money, depending on what fare bucket you buy. I'm sure there are many unprofitable 1Ks out there just like there are profitable 2Ps. Ironically, what you're saying is that it's ok to treat an unprofitable 1K better than a profitable 2P. That some how, the unprofitable 1K's loyalty is better and count for more than a profitable 2P's.

If UA cares about offering perks based on profitability, then the whole FFP program as it stands now should be dismantled. Go to something like GS - make it revenue based then. Otherwise, you have no way of distinguishing who is profitable and who isn't if you're screwing them all the same.

The vast majority of Kayakers buy cheap fares (likely unprofitable ones), maybe tack on a bag fee. Aside from the credit card, E+ access has been offered for quite awhile to GMs as either an annual subscription or per flight basis.

The $95 credit card won't necessarily attract loyalty. If a GM can get all the perks with that, and buy E+ as needed, there's no point in flying more and spending more.

UA's welcome to offer incentives based on profitability and revenue. I have no problem with that. However, there's no way to distinguish those people from those that are less profitable.

I'm looking at my travel for next year. I have a good bit coming up for work. Could easily quality for 1P, with Plat and 1K good possibilities too. Work requires I travel on refundable Y/B fares, and will pay for C in TPAC. Now suppose I'm going to Europe on a Y/B fare as a 2P. Average ticket price is $3k. Would you find it acceptable being a profitable pax to sit in E- and only get one bag until you hit 50k, when you could have a 1P or 1K sitting in E+, paying only $1k and getting 3 bags free? I wouldn't. Which is why I'm planning on moving my business. I might be on a carrier with slightly less seat pitch, but if it's an overall better experience and I don't have to spin the E+ wheel, well, it's worth it.

Ironic that UA's willing to drive off that profit over the year to attract a kayaker.

Let's be honest - 50k is now the baseline, and even if you fly 50k, there's no guarantee that person is profitable either.

Er, no, I'm not. My point is exactly that they should treat a profitable 2P better than an unprofitable 1K. Re-read what I wrote: "Why should a loyal and unprofitable customer expect the same benefits as a loyal and profitable customer". In that sentence, the loyal and unprofitable customer is the unprofitable 1K, and the loyal and profitable customer is the profitable 2P. Believe it or not, I actually completely agree that the way that they're going about the program changes will drive off some profitable business.

This is the problem with having a legacy system already in place - it's hard to make changes without pissing somebody or everybody off. Look at what happened with Southwest rollout of Rapid Rewards 2.0. On the other hand, look at the rollout of JetBlue's TrueBlue or Virgin America's Elevate. All three explicitly reward revenue, not merely miles flown. If AA or UA were designing a brand new program from scratch (and had the IT infrastructure to support it) with no pre-existing members, you can bet that they'd have a significant revenue component and very little distance component. This, of course, would be absolutely terrible for me as I buy el-cheapo fares and know exactly how to take advantage of the benefits that UA offers me.

Fair enough. To many on FT, the lower tiers aren't seen as profitable and we're expendable. My apologies for making that assumption.

I think what they could do is keep it as it is but include a revenue component. GS's threshold will probably always be secret and that's fine. However, UA (or any other legacy) could offer some perks if certain revenue targets were met. I see some semblance of doing that for Y/B/M domestically, but not so much internationally. One thing I suggested to UA is something they used to do - grant E+ for anyone on a Y/B fare. If they're paying that much for a ticket, they deserve it regardless of status. Having to pay a premium for it on top of that's insulting when a person on an L fare gets the same offer and could sit in E+ for significantly less.

My belief is that United is changing their program from Mileage Plus to Money Plus (or Mileage/Money Plus). And that we are about half way through the tranformation.

Back when the Legacy's established their Mileage programs, the correlation between Mileage and Money (Revenue/Profitability) was much stronger. These were the days when Saturday Night Stays were required for the lowest/low fares. True fare competition was limited, as Southwest was still a regional airline, was not flying to business centers and avoided major hubs.

During this phase, the universe of leisure flyers who flew 100,000 or 50,000 miles was likely very small. The vast majority of high mileage flyers were business travelers, who would pay higher fares (to avoid Saturday night stays). Even if you could book in advance, the fares were still relatively high. Thus, 1K/1P were generally profitable (i.e. high PRASM - Passenger Revenue per Available Seat Mile). And it made sense to add benefits based on increasing miles/loyalty.

As we have seen, over the past 10+ years, the correlation between Mileage and Money has collapsed. Saturday Night stays are no longer required to get the lowest fares. Southwest and other LCC airlines are now in most major cities and cover the courntry. Many business travelers can (and do) take advantage of the lowest/low fares. Thus, mileage no longer "stands in" for money (Revenue/Profitability).

To gain or main profitability, the legacy airlines are trying to transform their programs to better reward Money over Miles. An obvious example is the Global Service program.

A simple test is to look at the changes made over the past several years and ask this question - Does this change reward Money over Miles? The vast majority of changes do fit. And the changes in the future will also fit this pattern.

I was trying to remember the last place I heard that...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT_O4GDrWoQ

Apparently $misek is too busy making his own nauseating videos to watch this one from DL.