That's a fair point, and not one I have given any thought to. As a mostly domestic 1K, I'm on US once in a while, but never anyone else within *A. But your concern seems valid, as it would potentially impact my occasional trips on US.

Thinking out loud, but maybe a UA spend requirement and/or a *A spend requirement? In other words, maybe a 7K total spend on any *A, with a minimum spend of xx dollars on UA, sort of like the 4 segment minimum within the 2012 program? That's in addition to the current segments or miles requirement, as I don't think they should come down.

And competitors are willingly going to give UA access to info on how much you spend on a TK, SQ or AC ticket... Unlikely....

This is why I said, spend works for WN, there are no partners to account for. And why it works for hotel chains.

I would actually like the 4 segment minimum to be like AC has (5 segments OR 10,000 miles on AC metal)

didn't DL try this once by having E fares earn no MQM's? i vaguely remember seeing a huge backlash about it and checking the fare charts now, seems that E does earn MQMs now.

i think the problem with this is that a lot of companies out there have travel policies (mine is like this, and it's a major global company so i have to imagine there's others like this) that dictate you take the lowest fare available. i don't have much control over that. domestically i'm forced to fly STLKGN a lot, and i only fly YBM on those occasions i'm called into an assignment last minute, which i would say is only about 10-15% of my work travel.

i like to fly. but flying 60-80 segments a year without status privileges simply means i'm going to stop and find a different profession.

it really depends on how much any airline would value that repeatability from me each year and on what kind of customer they want to focus their resources on, which i guess is the entire premise of a loyalty program to begin with. sure, on paper i'm going to buy the same STLKGN fares that a kayaker would too. but at least if they treat me well, they have a much higher confidence level that i'll consistently fill those seats, as opposed to a kayker who searches purely based on price. also i'm more likely to buy a higher fare on international flights should my GPU's clear, which they consistently do and so i buy W+ fares on them, so they can fill up otherwise empty seats in the BF cabin.

or they can spend money on a consistent marketing blitz to attract kayakers. i don't think there's necessarily a wrong decision, but it will attract different groups of customers.

with MP i guess i'm just confused as to what kind of customer they're trying to cater to. there's many here who firmly believe that there is an all out war against frequent fliers, but my personal experience hasn't been that bad, at least not as bad as many say here. it's really the lack of coherent messaging and corporate direction, especially with the MP program into 2013 and onwards, that's a little worrying to me more than anything else.

so far.

I see your point, but not sure it would really bother United (to lose a fair number of elites to CC features). Particularly if the elites lost were below Plat. United likely traps a far greater number of flyers via their CC/MP program than they do with E+.

Ultimately, it's not in United's best interest to give away more than they have to when they're trying to fill a plane (using cheap fares). The EV ("elite value") of a given flight is all over the map, and entirely out of proportion for the sort of itins we use for mileage runs. How does United easily modify their system to fill their seats but not give away the farm? And keep it simple?

Maybe you have an elite buy-in fee for lower fares that's waive for *G & above. Boy, that would make it tough for people reaching for that 50k milestone the first time! Or not. So they pay an extra $25/flight or something like that, just to get the PQMs.

The big battle here is that people flying on business feel that they deserve every perk they can get from the airline, because their boss isn't going to pay one red cent for anything extra. Which would presumably include any extra PQM fees. But as I mentioned, if losing those fees is a *G benefit, it might not be so bad.

Sure gets confusing when looking at itins on other carriers though! Seems like there should be some standard across all of *A. Or at least some minimum.

Lots of interesting ideas, but I'm still convinced that UA is trying to find a way to do away with ultra low spends, but with high status. In my previous sales position I had said clients, over time I made myself "difficult" to do business with for the clients that consumed my time, but cost me too much money. Regardless of scale, any smart company needs to find ways to address an issue such as this. We had fixed pricing, so I could only control my response time and quality of response. UA is working under somewhat different circumstances, but not different enough to find a way to limit their exposure to the ultra low spenders, without harming the *alliance.

Transparency for GS qualification would be so much better than the "skull and crossbones". I spoke with a GS agent yesterday who said half their phone calls are from people asking if they have qualified or requalified for 2013. It does not seem like the best way for UAs most skilled CSRs to spend their time.

TWA had an interesting system for a while, before being gobbled up by AA, they awarded "bonus" miles based on fare rather than distance. So a $900 ticket earned 3 times as many bonus miles as a $300 fare, but you still got base miles equal to mileage. I can't remember how the Elite bonuses worked with the fare bonuses, although I was Elite on TWA a couple years, even living in Houston as I was flying to small midwest cities served by TWA as the most convenient connection from Houston. I was even considering switching all my flying to TWA ( or as much as practical) since I had lots of expensive business trips to underserved cities.

That would be more of a hybrid system than currently used, although the increase in redeemable mile bonuses this year for the highest fare classes was certainly a movement towards a system that recognizes revenue as more valuable than before. (and I don't see many people posting about that increase in bonus miles, even people that claim to fly paid F)

Neither the mileage nor the spend will ever be public because it depends on the city. If it was reported to be $20,000 in TPA and $75,000 in SFO, what do you think the public reaction would be?

There seem to be two ways to try to accomplish this. On the one hand you can make spend factor into the equation for achieving status. There hasn't been as much push by United yet to go about it this way. The other way is to diminish the benefits of the status so that status alone doesn't mean all that much but buying more expensive tickets provides the most/more benefits on the flight where the expensive ticket was purchased. United seems to be doing more on this front than on the spend based status at the moment. Just like most problems if you try to solve it in a binary fashion with either of these approaches you don't get an optimal result. You have to figure out the right combination of these two approaches and optimize together. So far United has not done that but they may eventually get there.

here is pretty much my UA spending from last year:

About 3 RT flights a month (4 segments each) around $200 each (all for work; and yes I do know my schedule for far ahead and yes I do buy tickets way far ahead if it makes sense)

Math says:

12 x 3 x 200 = $7200 to UA
12 x 3 x 4 = 144 PQS (and around 100Ksome PQMs)

they better not take my 1K status away or I would go for a challenge match elsewhere...

I have no idea what you mean by this.
Say I am doing a project for a government agency in Bahrain. They are paying a prime contractor who is paying a subcontractor who is paying a sub-subcontractor who is paying the company I work for. Then I use my company Amex to buy tickets. Who is "actually behind the spend" here?
The company I work for bids on projects with fixes fee proposals. We include travel expenses in the fee - whatever we think we can include and still "win" the job. Once we have won, those travel funds are there for us to use. It's essentially a pass-thru cost of doing the work. The company never views those funds as profit as we know what they are for. In that sense they aren't really ever "company" money.
I could spend the funds to fly any airline. I chose based on many factors, but loyalty is the strongest. I get the rewards for directing the spend in that fashion.

At $0.072/mile and $50/segment they probably wouldn't be too concerned about you moving on.

I think for many of us it would at that point make it impossible for us to game the system and fly UA at all; I can switch NYC to EWR in our system to be pretty sure UA will be the cheapest flight but if I had to spend company (or my own) money simply for the privilege of EQMs I couldn't get away with it.

Also I fly a lot for business on *A which grants me status, which drives drives my domestic flights (holiday or work) to UA. If *A stopped counting (or was significantly devalued) I might switch to AA/BA and use OW for my international travel, or I might switch to another *A program for *G status and then fly whomever was cheapest domestically as I'd lose a bunch of the UA perks.

Will the 2013 MP Program be delayed?
 

This is speculation on the part of FTers, or course. However, persons speculate on many topics.

My question for your discussion is will UA delay implementation of the 2013 MP program past Feb. 1?

The reason I ask is that last year they announced the final details of the 2012 MP program several weeks in advance. We are one week from Feb. 1 and UA has not yet announced the FINAL details for 2013. ( Yes, I am aware that a few changes have been preannounced.)

Might UA be making some 11th hour changes to the 2013 MP program that could delay its implementation? Might all the many recent problems UA has experienced in 2012, such as : systems integration to SHARES and many related problems it caused, 2012 poor earnings report, problems figuring out how to board the flights, bad PR from 787 groundings, dilution of previous Elite benefits, and reported defections from UA FFers to other airlines due to all these problems, just to name a few, be causing UA management to rethink and revise their planned 2013 MP program details?

Please add your thoughts to the discussion. Here's hoping we have a much-improved 2013 MP program that will please many members. Happy flying!

No. What UA will be working on is the 2014 program or minor details in the 2013 program [like changing the expiration date of RPUs/GPUs]. Last year was different as they were in the the process of merging both programs and a single PSS.