At Munich they are forced to compete with carriers with far better offerings in all categories (including in their own alliance). At IAH and EWR they think they're invulnerable, with a captive audience. Why would a dairy farmer worry about what his cows think? He's got them all penned in.

I also wonder how many agents in MUC are UA employees? Most of the agents I've interacted with at both MUC and FRA have been LH or Menzies.

UA have a staff of 12 at MUC, plus several third-party agents.

Just wait until the AA/US merger is announced and approved, M+ will be "enhanced" again not for the better.

No doubt in my mind this is the direction they're all going.

Looking at this globally, from the outside, it appears as though all airlines have come to the conclusion that the level of loyalty-driven benefits they have been offering is too high, and as each one takes it down a notch, the others follow.

It seems like the cost of offering these programs at historical benefits is not deemed to justify the return.

The airlines are monetizing typical frequent flyer benefits through partners like banks (Chase Explorer card is an example). As the volume of benefits that can actually be provided is limited, the airlines are cutting frequent flyer benefits to make up for what they sell. I wonder how this reduction in benefits affects customer loyalty.

Interestingly, I just was offered an online survery through one of the online survey portals on frequent flyer programs. All the questions, though, were about United Mileage Plus. Lots of opportunity to rank different attributes of frequent flyer programs--some actual, some potential. And, since I indicated that I had flown 11 flights not on United in the past 12 months, I was given a menu of possible 'sweeteners' and asked for each, how many of those flights I would have taken on UA if they had been offered.

Also, several questions asked for satisfaction and lack of satisfaction with a variety of specific attributes of the program, and a space to give my general overall opinion.

Not saying that this will make any difference, but clearly they're paying money to get responses from elites. It's the first thing I've seen that suggests that they are trying to figure out what might matter to us.

Buying business tomorrow v. selling today
 

United got a double hit, in my opinion, since they started trying to monetize the FF program at the same time they attempted a very difficult systems integration that disrupted the entire operation for customers and front line staff. Just when they needed their best customers the most, they hobbled the operation AND made the benefits to sticking with that operation less beneficial. Looking back, I think this will be judged as a not particularly bright move. Fundamentally, I wonder whether the metrics the "revenue enhancement" operation are being judged by internally are at odds with the metrics of total revenue generation long term, since the "extra revenue" celebration from a few "upsells" can be seen immediately but the hangover from losing your best customers can take a year to show up as companies review their contracts, and individuals evaluate where they are going to spend their money in the coming year. In other words, I don't think you can take credit for revenue enhancements unless you take as a cost to those revenue wins, the future losses of repeat customers because you did not retain them once they figured out their benefit was illusory. It is just math, that selling to anyone what you used to give away to attract and keep HVFs and VFFs, is going to result in fewer HVFs and VFFs. In my opinion, United badly miscalculated just how many of those folks they were going to lose and what the revenue impact of that would be, relative to what they thought they could gain by trying to sell that free stuff off, especially when those "enhancements" have to be extracted from the part of the customer base that is by definition, loyal to the lowest price, not the airline.

I suggest that tom911 gets to the heart of the matter in several respects, but none closer than what I believe is the underlying dynamic: the credit cards. Hyatt's loyalty program is the latest to see the detrimental effects. Southwest's "RR 2.0" was a total overhaul to provide fungibility and better alignment with the credit card. FT sages, who had seen it happen before, pointed at Delta, warned that this was afoot with these.

Mileage Plus and other travel loyalty programs are not retreating in a vacuum. First, it's obscure in plain sight, lights. The card has the loyalty program's brand. People want, demand - supported by word-of-mouth-marketing - the card. "Other programs have one. Why not mine?" "US members get one. Why not international members?!" The bloggers show how to master the credit card program. Then it begins to compete with loyalty as the loyalty program managers reap the revenue from the credit card. They, before we, see the zero-sum between card loyalty and airline/hotel/etc. loyalty. By then, probably much earlier, it's fait accompli.

Now comes a transformed loyalty program. Which is, at this point, really just the lipstick.

As people from the old CO board can attest, I'm far from a UA/CO apologist. I like to think I'm objective but as far as I'm concerned:

- I've yet to miss a GPU, including EWR-TLV 2x
- I've been able to redeem Saver Class BF rewards 2x
- I haven't had a single IRROP that lasted more than 1 hour
- EWR is my home base and it's neither good nor bad (ie, same as it ever was)
- My biggest frustration has been over pilot's not turning on Ch9 out of spite
- I'm generally pleased with the service I receive on the phone as a 1K
- AA DEFINITELY treats their EXP's better than CO's treat 1K's. In my short time as an EXP I was blown away
- Was not at all impressed with AA's hard C/F hard prodict
- Was blown away on my most recent DL flight by how far they've come. Probably better than UA, at least until wi-fi is installed fleet-wide

I flew 125K+ miles in 2012, mostly on M-class or higher. Conclusion: UA is extraordinarily mediocre. Good enough for me as long as I sit up front >80% of the time and I can redeem my GPU's & miles.

+1. But for me it's 100% up front. IMHO, UA still remains the best available choice for US based VFIFs, but if they deprecate the ability to redeem GPUs and miles, I'm gone in an instant.

Does power of suggestion work if I suggest that Helena Bonham Carter's character in a very popular current musical movie comes to mind?

[Mrs. Thenardier]

Bain? So all our problems with MP are ultimately Mitt Romney's fault? :P

Pfft...

That ONE exec was the CFO- therefore representing a clear philosophy of the senior management. The corporach philosophy was further bolstered by a multitude of decisions, that I won't re-hash here. But in the end, they had no desire to hear what the customer was saying.

The sad thing is that before the merger, UA treated their 1Ks the same as AA treats their EXPs.

And yes, DL has definitely improved. If AA manages to avoid the problems suffered by UA during their upcoming merger, UA could soon be a distant third to AA and DL if they keep treating customers as single transactions to be fleeced.