allikator

Believe it. I was dropped from UGS to 1K with around 80K full fare miles, around 280k total EQM. No idea on spend.

With VX into PHL now and better foreign flag carriers for my int'l C trips, they'll get what they consider me, 100k in low fare domestic.

blueman2

Might be several issues, but I agree with your premise that $50K FF spend should get GS. But, people often forgot you CANNOT include:
- UA number flights on non-UA metal
- Fees, taxes, etc. Only the base ticket

Because very often you only get a single price, it is very hard to tell what the fees/taxes are and almost impossible to tell which portion of the ticket is for the UA metal segments and which is for the LH/AQ/whatever segments that are on the same ticket.

I doubt seriously that anyone who spends $50K on FF, UA metal flights excluding fees and taxes, would not get GS. Just something wrong there.

Ari

If the $50K is a bunch of Z and B fares . . .

blueman2

Yes, but really, if the $50K is excluding taxes and fees, and is purely UA metal, even Z and B only would qualify I bet. But then, we are talking about something which none of us really has any facts to support our guesses.

small ring

Definitely believe it.

After being GS since the beginning of the program I was dropped. This past year I had 45k spend, 81k FF miles and 135k BIS.

In an odd way, it was stressful waiting for this news. But looking back, I only managed to upgrade my INTL flights (my major travel) 70% of the time on full fare tickets. The only consistent benefit was fast entry at SFO and also having the nice telephone staff in Detroit.

Now no longer "working" to maintain status will free me to take better in air service on Lufthansa and still maintain the same 1k level.

-p

UA_Flyer

I requalified as expected, but I am confused by those who did not qualify or requalify with decent amount of FFM and $ spent. There seems to be inconsistency in granting GS to PMCO and PMUA elites. I am happy for those PMCO elites because we are now one happy family, but post-merger UA needs to be fair to PMUA elites. I have no scientific basis to back up my claim, but simply based on reading the posts in the United Forum.

As matter of reference, my numbers are:

400K+ EQM
150K+ FFM on UA/CO
$90K spent on UA/CO
My FFM count on other *A is fairly close to my FFM on UA/CO.

glx

oh my god, how many times does it have to be said? Z and B are included in the full fare metric as documented on both ua.com and co.com. probably 50-75% of my fares were Z or B and I got GS.

SportsTech

Remember that the preview page is a product of United.bomb, home of persistently wrong fares, seat availability, award inventory, and pretty much every other data-driven publishing error imaginable. I would not be the least bit surprised to learn that someone in United IT set a flag incorrectly so that any GS who didn't make it in Round 2 (of 3) got the "sorry" message.

I'll be very surprised if any people with more than 70K of high yield miles on UA metal don't requalify. I requaled with only 70K FF miles, half of them domestic, and only 125K EQM last year - down about 50% from the previous year.

Ari

I am aware of that fact; I thought context of my post was pretty clear, but you obviously need it spelled out, so here goes: The way in which GS takes into account FF mileage (as opposed to spend patterns) is currently unknown. Z and B fares are cheaper and less profitible than F/A/J/C/D/Y fares; if UA is taking spend and profitibility into account for invitations, Z and B fares are not the same as as those fares because they are cheaper. If UA is counting FF miles, they are counted the same, but that does not appear to be the case.

To review, a poster said something about $50k spend on FF tickets not making the cut; I made the point (which I thought was obvious) that not all FF tickets are alike and someone buying a bunch of Z and B fares-- even $50k worth-- is not as profitible a customer as one who spends $50k on F/A/J/C/D/Y fares and UA might recognize that.

So, oh my god, how many times does it have to be said? GS counts more than just total FFM and total spend-- there is more to it-- and just because two different fares are considered FF doesn't mean they will result in equal treatment. Duh.

kevanyalowitz

Honestly, if someone where to spend $50k and fly less than 200k BIS, I find it hard to believe that they would not make GS. Even if you are booking M/E/U fares. I tend to think this the algorithm may be less complex than we make it out to be.

Dinky SAN

I, too, have been wondering what other factors come into play. I just re-qualified and spend was about 40k with ~85k FFM. I say about 85k FFM because I've been tracking the FFM on .bomb carefully and last year, I got about ~5k credited to my account that is totally unaccounted for (maybe from the VISA card). Further, ~10k was credited when irreg ops sent me to another flight and this then was registered in .bomb as a "Y" fare ticket and went into FFM. So this is another source of "error" in recording high yield tickets in using only the FFM counter in *.bomb.

Having said that, I fly four times a year to SIN and almost always on "D" fare with the domestic segment being "A" fare. I threw in one Y ticket to Europe and couple of domestic Y tickets last year to up my FFM spend. However, in the four years I've been GS, my FFM were about ~75k when I first qualified, then just over 50k the second, 77k the third, and then ~85k last year.

In my case, my suspicions for re-qualifying are two: 1) my FFM has been trending upwards and 2) I fly mostly TPAC where I have many better options (SQ, NH, OZ). Three years ago, right after I re-qualified on the "fly 50k and re-qualify" offer, I flew SQ for the remainder of the year because it's a much better flying experience. But if I have an incentive to stick with UA, like trying to get GS, then all the flights go to UA. I have a suspicion that UA takes that into account.

Ari

I am inclined to agree, but I wanted to point out that not all revenue is the quality of revenue that GS is designed to reward and entice; Z fares are certainly FF on the My Activity tab, but there is a difference between a $4,500 Z ticket and a $9,000 C and posters here (glx, for example) should not be mislead into thinking they are the same as they are not; one ticket is twice as profitible and United is aware of how their costs and fares work and who is giving them profitible business that they want to entice.

glx

Cost of fuel and equipment aside, what's the difference, that you know for a *fact*, between me flying two Z tickets vs. one C ticket? Are you absolutely, positively sure that they consider the two differently? The point is that while I'm paying $4,500 for that biz class ticket, someone on a W class ticket, who admittedly is consuming 4x less space, is paying $450 - but paying nearly 10x less. Full fare is full fare.

You're drifting away from fact (UA uses FF miles as a metric, and CO used FF spend (sans taxes/fees) as their metric) and back into conjecture about how the program works and that's why the original thread is 1.2gazillion pages long.

blueman2

glx, as you point out, everything anyone says here about GS is conjecture. No one really knows for sure what the formula is. But we all enjoy trying to guess . With that said, I believe you are putting too much weight on FF miles as a determiner. Yes, FF miles has been used in the past for requal criteria. However, it is mostly accepted here that qualification is a combination of revenue and profitability. FF miles alone is not the determining factor, except sometimes for requal when a specific goal is set out (and there was no such goal last year, for example).

I think Ari is correct in his view. But, again, we are all just guessing!

Ari

We know the following from this and previous threads:

• There are travelers who got invitations and who spent less than other travelers who were not invited.
• There are travelers who got invitations and who flew less FFM than other travelers who were not invited.
• There are travelers who got invitations and who both spent less and flew less FFM than travelers who were not invited.

So there has to be a metric other than total spend and FFM and the only metric that remains to distinguish between such travelers is yield (cents per mile). Which do you think United prefers, someone who pays $0.50 per mile or someone who pays $0.25 per mile but flies twice as much?

And someone on a J fare paying $9,000 is paying 2x what you are paying but taking up the same amount of space-- how is that any different than your comparison between W and Z?

There is a distinction between "full fares" (F/J/Y/B) and fares on which "Full Fare Miles" are earned (F/A/J/C/D/Z/Y/B). Z fares are not full fares-- they are discounted/restricted fares-- but you get "Full Fare Miles" for them. So all fares on which "Full Fare Miles" are earned are not full fares (this has to do with the way the fares are published in ITA).

Except we know that neither FFM nor revenue is entirely determinative of invitations because of the discrepancies we have seen time and time again between those invited and those not.