SEA1K4EVR

The problem is that it's a slippery slope. To date there has never been a published fare that didn't earn PQM's.. once it starts, where does it end? Suddenly you may see N popping up all over the place. I'm not yet convinced the N fare doesn't earn PQM's... it's definitely possible the PQM's just aren't displaying correctly on the website..we've all seen that before. I hope that's the case. There's nothing in the fare rules for that N fare that precludes PQM earnings (not that there definitely would be).

And for those who have always earned miles on paid flights and who don't pay attention when booking... imagine their shock when they earn nothing. It's not like they have a big flashing banner with a warning..which they should if indeed this fare doesn't qualify. This is a major shift from historical practices (if true).

FlyWorld

Unfortunately, other carriers have had these fare classes for a long time. The slippery slope appears to be leading to some place in the bottom of the value chain, along with RyanAir and Spirit Airlines. But, even real airlines have these fare classes. It might be something we have to learn to work with, and I agree, it's good for choice - basically seems like unbundling elite benefits from the fare so you can choose to pay for elite benefits or not. From UA's perspective, seems really dumb, in a world where those elite benefits have a value rapidly approaching zero. I agree that the worst part of this will be for corporate travelers required to fly on cheapest fare.

paule123

Checking the fare rules in KVS, it appears fare basis NA0QS has no advance purchase restrictions. $275 R/T for the dates channa posted.

blug

Elite benefits may have been reduced but the value of UA miles is definitely not approaching zero, and is still one of the highest, if not the highest, in the industry.

DeaconFlyer

If it becomes more widespread, it would become akin to Southwest's model where benefits are based on spend.

If the lowest fares no longer earn PQMs, elite status would go to those who were actually profitable to UA. High spenders would benefit, once a year kettles wouldn't care, and those with restrictive budgets (corporate or otherwise) would feel the pain.

aCavalierInCoach

I seriously doubt this will result in materially lower fares, and to the extent it creates some broadly distributed benefits, I think folks here are not happy because it obviously comes at their expense.[/QUOTE]

I also think it's foolhardy to believe that this isn't going to cause booking nightmares for some folks given the lack of united.com reliability.

aCavalierInCoach

This is where UA is headed -- and it's a business decision that is really hard to argue with, when it comes down to it.

dcsnowwake

its all fine and dandy if they say hey next year starting Feb 1 this is what will happen, give us a heads up and not in the middle of the year.

I hate the idea, but if its going that way, thats the best IMO

Sykes

This smells like a mistake fare to me.

Beerman92

Not that I know if this is another glitch or a new fare class that earns zero PQMs but based on what Channa posted this fare appears to earn United miles as you are referring to them but not PQMs i.e. You still earn miles you can redeem for awards and such but don't earn any that apply towards status.

mherdeg

For United to offer a revenue booking class on its Web site which earns fewer than 100% miles, let alone 0%, would be a bit scary. When this has been done before ("Twares") you knew what you were getting into.

I'm not sure that this screenshot gives us much evidence of anything except that there's a lookup table which maps fare classes to displayed mileage earning amounts and that lookup table says "N" => 0% or has no entry for "N" at all. That may not represent a policy announcement, just a not-yet-updated fare code=>percentage mapping on united.com. Even if united.com said that N earned something other than 0%, I still wouldn't trust that to actually be true until seeing an announcement from UA.

Wasn't there a time in the past few years when Continental awarded fewer frequent-flyer miles if you booked certain fare classes through a travel agent or phone, but awarded full miles if you booked on continental.com? What fare class was that?

FlyWorld

Agreed. Mile redemption is a very strong point of the MP program.

Unfortunately for me, I'm one who doesn't value that as highly as upgrades, whose value has been greatly reduced.

If I fly > 100K BIS in a year, the last thing I want is more flights for free and I should be getting UG with RPU/GPU, so there's little remaining need to UG with miles.

From this perspective, the value that I'm getting is approaching zero.

None of which is terrible. I just wish they'd stop sneaking in these little changes day by day. I wish they'd just design a comprehensive program, announce it to us comprehensively, and implement it reliably. Then, we can look at what we're dealing with and optimize our behavior against those known parameters.

Red_Rob

Speaking for myself, if I didn't get FF benefits I would change careers to one that did not involve nearly as much travel.

aCavalierInCoach

Agreed, but probably a tall order asking them for such forethought when they seem to be having difficulty running the airline day-to-day.

warrenc1

On a related note. Under the RPU terms and conditions it says that N fares are upgradeable using a RPU