2013 1K Challenge Start Date?
 

Does anyone know if United starts offering 1K challenges in January or do they wait until February when many peoples' statuses expire? I vaguely recall someone discussing the latter, but am not certain. Thanks in advance!

looks like it based on this post.

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/19963036-post66.html

Thanks for that, but I wonder if UA is handling status matches and challenges separately.

suggest reading the reference thread -- the terms status match and status challenge tend to be used interchangeably, since with very few exceptions UA no longer does pure status match. However many folks use the term status match when they really mean what UA does, status challenges.

The reference thread/post is a post about a new 1/1/13 status challenge which answers your specific question.

They offered "buy-backs" in previous years in two formats:

- Buy PQM starting at a few hundred to several thousand $ depending on how many you need to reach the previous threshold.

- A pay to challenge format, with different prices and targets up to 35K BIS miles (not PQM) to retain the old status.

I suspect we will see one or a variation of one of these before the end of the month.

United should acknowledge that their bumbling last year cost a lot of passengers a lot of heartache, and smart travellers chose to avoid them during the transition time as a result. They should then be lenient on travellers who have dropped a level... I have been 1K for 6 years straight but because of a couple miserable United months I only hit 90K miles in 2012. Would be nice if they gave a gesture to people. I guess we all know they will not, though.