burlax

We've made a full circle here. I agree that the "best" customer is someone who gives lots of money and consumes no benefits, or rather, who doesn't even fly. I just don't think that UA should expect that kind of "best" customer.

Incidentally, none of the industry leaders built around that model. EK, SQ, OZ, etc - all of them seem to try to entice consumer by offering excellent product / service. None of them built its business on the premise of getting corporate contracts while providing poor hard and soft product.

blug

^Agreed. I'm sure if UA hasn't been providing the "expert mode" since day one, nobody would ever have thought that UA should do it, let alone complaining about it.

thegrailer

Let's just end the argument now. I am UA's best customer .

Often1

What competition? I can never get through to the Eastern, TWA or Braniff CS people.

Seriously, what options do you have? Just look at the AA & DL boards and see what those "elites" have to say about how they're treated. And, then consider that AA will wind up as another piece of US, I mean HP.

There's no real competition out there and thus, if you jump ship, you just land in the water and drown.

Mike Jacoubowsky

So you mean those life rafts they talk about in the safety video don't work? And the air masks... is the oxygen really flowing if the bag doesn't inflate? And the light inside the 'fridge...

A few years ago I said the industry couldn't survive with oil at $85+/barrel. I was wrong; they did what they had to and have actually been profitable near $100/barrel. This isn't about a lack of competition per se; it's about an industry that had to change, radically, if it was going to continue. And nearly all of those changes were bound to be changes we didn't like.

If there's a villain to blame for all this, it's not Jeff or any other current airline CEO. It's the price of oil. It forced changes in the industry that wouldn't likely have come without the meteoric rise in fuel costs. It forced a short-term focus on cash flow that became essential to their survival. It was no longer practical to believe that you could bleed cash quarter after quarter after quarter and expect to be saved by a recovering economy. You had to plan for the worst and find ways to profit in a mediocre economy.

The airline industry, as we knew it, shouldn't be able to exist in a weak economy with expensive fuel. And guess what? It doesn't. It's a very different industry, and it's poised to survive pretty much no-matter-what. If you look at it dispassionately and not as a consumer, it's rather amazing.

UA-NYC

That's a silly argument. You could make the same argument about SWUs, E+, C9, Int'l F, etc.

Like many things PMUA, benefits, policies, and procedures enjoyed are either neutered or neutralized.

sbm12

Actually, in the case of EK at least, they charge full price up front and don't offer upgrades. In the back it is tight and not particularly special, but it is cheap in many cases. They aren't really competing on offering a tremendous product down the back.
They have started down this path already and I expect the changes in that direction to continue. Higher fares already receive more benefits once you are an elite. And not just on United.

It is happening whether we like it or not.

sam123

Many groups of people on FT.

The MR enthusiasts squeezing every PQM and RDM out their $ are OK customers.

People like me spending >$50k / y on premium cabins and never even looking at other carriers even in *A unless no reasonable UA option exists *are* their best customers.

Not that you could tell. I flew UA and LH in premium cabins this week and got *much* better treatment from LH. Such are the program shackles, good for United I guess.

bldr1k

I could be wrong here but I really don't think there is a United conspiracy against their best fliers.

I think United is a dysfunctional mess since the merger and getting worse. I would have expected a few months of chaos after March 3rd but things seem to be getting worse.

I suspect it will take United 1-2 years to restore their customer service and dependability. They will be a very different airline at that time with fewer 1Ks and GS fliers.

I hit 100K early in the year and have switched to other airlines and it is amazing to see the difference. Of my last 10 flights on United, about 40% have been on-time and some have been significantly delayed or cancelled. My last 10 flights on Frontier and Southwest have been 100% on-time.

Baze

I personally know very few flying on B or higher fares. It is a very small percentage of the fliers. Yes, UA likes them but it does cost them more to cater to them. But for the average elite they are on a discounted ticket just like the kettles but they can fee to death the kettles which means more money in. For those elites it is lost profit because they are not paying for bags, E+, upgrades, like the kettles. The elite just happens to be on more flights than 1 kettle. But the kettles are replaced by more kettles paying those fees. So you get 10 kettles on K fares paying all those extra fees and their profit is much more than 1 elite buying 10 K fares for the same price not paying for bags, E+, upgrades. Those 10 kettles are more valuable to the airline than that 1 elite. I fear the days of mileage based elites may be numbered and it will all be revenue based. Pay more, get more. And it may happen sooner than we think.

burlax

I don't really care what any FF program says or what the benefits are as long as the companies keep their end of the bargain and everything is transparent and predictable. Because once I have representations on which I can rely, I can make an informed decision whether to fly airline A or airline B or take Amtrak.

The problem is not that UA cuts benefits. The problem is the manner in which UA does it. UA could have said - we are losing money on the upgrade BS, therefore starting from the next year, we are changing MP to not offer GPUs/RPUs/CPUs. That would have been totally fine. Current UA flyers would have time to decide whether they want to stick with the company. Some would have left. Some would have stayed.

However, this is what UA did. UA chose to treat its FFs as idiots. First, with stealthy ToD sales. Then, pulling information that could be used to prove that UA is in breach of its obligations under the current MP program.

So, ultimately, the question is - do you really want to deal with the company that tries to gain unfair advantage by breaching and covering up its breaches instead of honestly announcing changes to MP well ahead of time and allowing people to complete the year enjoying whatever benefits they earned?

emcampbe

[bolding mine] Really....theoretically, if this happend, it would be "totally fine?" You're probably right, there probably wouldn't be a several tens of pages long thread complaining about this. FT'ers would take news like this in stride.

burlax

From the legal point of view that would be absolutely kosher, unlike what's going on right now.

sbm12

Wait...there is a contractual obligation for the company to offer inventory details on their website? Really??

Please explain how what they're doing is, from a legal point of view, not kosher.

burlax

No, but there is a contractual obligation to provide certain benefits if they were earned. UA was breaching ever since they started to sell ToDs. They don't have a contractual obligation to offer inventory details. But in this case, pulling the inventory details has nothing to do with offered explanations and has everything to do with the fact that UA was in breach of its obligations and would rather not have the proof of said breaches right on their website.

As to your second question - if you're looking for advice, pm me, and we'll figure something out.