5khours

UPDATED WITH RESULTS AFTER 90 POSTS (*See notes at bottom of post.)

1. E+ 103
2. Award availability 94
3. Hub Captive (Near airport or convenient routes from home airport) 80
4. Overall Route Network 69
5. *A 54
6. Int'l UGs (GPUs) 42
7. SDC 32
8. Domestic UG (CPUs) 31
9. Good website for booking and awards 20
9. Price 20
10. GF 19
11. Award Flexibilty 12
12. Front Line Employees 12
.
.
97. Dreamliner/Smisek 1

* Arbitrary rating of 5 points for top choice, 4 for 2nd,...and 1 for 5th choice and below. Only choices with 10 points or more listed. Apologies for any errors or misinterpretations.

Been a lot of problems with UA recently, so I've been thinking why I still choose UA. And...

1. Award availability
2. *A
3. GF
4. Easy to book awards on website
5. UGs on reasonably priced international fares
6. High % of domestic UGs (YMMV)
7. Great 1K phone agents almost always
8. Friendly (most of the time) service.

If enough people respond, I'll try to compile the results. (You might want to add your status if it's not on your profile.)

garykung

UA's own network

lhrsfo

What about E+?

halls120

1. international UG availability
2. *A
3. 1K desk when you can get to it
4. E+
5. Channel 9
6. 1K baggage desk
7. some of the best front-line employees on the ground and in the air.

rankourabu

1. Awards with no YQ, one-ways, open jaws, no change/cancel fees etc
2. E+

ok... thats all I can think of

flyingnosh

For some of us, far and away the major factor is that we live near a UA hub where there's little competition. Just being able to fly non-stop to almost anywhere in the world beats all other reasons.

DL2SXM

why fly UA? IDK, thats a very good question. I mean, who in the world would want to fly UA from LAX to SYD on their dumpy 747's when with a little hiccup in the weather, they have to divert the queen of the skies... DL and Virgin fly 777's and can make it NS without the diversion in the event of bad WX.

SFO777

While true, thanks to Chase none of those three require that one actually fly UA.

mgcsinc

1. SDC

endrond

I'm a mainly-domestic 1k. (2-4 international trips/year, usually in paid C)

1. Living near SFO. No other carrier has a comparable set of nonstops from there. This is by far the most important factor.
2. Domestic upgrades (CPU and RPU)
3. E+
4. International C hard product
5. GPUs

MBS MillionMiler

For me?

1. SWUs (and the ancillary things that come with them, including the relatively lower upgradable fares and fairly good availability if you plan 9-12 months ahead, as I do).

2. They fly out of my small airport, 9 minutes from driveway to ticket counter...And several of the employees, even thought they're contract workers.

That's really about it. Most everything else, I could get from DL or AA with equal status. I'd have said things before like Channel 9, but that is going away--sorry, but it is (look at the A3XX IFE debacle)...Competitive advantage gone. And while there are some great front line UA employees, I've had nothing but frustrations and super long waits and re-booking times during irrops.

DL has more than double the daily flights from my home airport to more than one hub, and serves every single destination that I fly to (some more frequently, some less frequently than UA).

I know UA has rather good award availability, however I rarely redeem awards--even after a J award to South Asia this winter, I still have 500,000 miles in my account, and my wife has another 200,000, with probably not another award redemption for a few more years. (We'd have been content keeping our plans to go to Hawaii, as we normally do, on paid tickets because I usually need the miles to keep 1K--the only reason we looked at something different this year was because of the HH devaluation and the fact that I have 1K locked up for this year).

bob_the_d

1.) EWR. living on 10th avenue means it's the second closest airport to me (i google mapped it one day and it turns out that from the west end of manhattan, EWR is actually a mile or two closer than JFK which i didn't believe at first). LGA is close and convenient, but the food and rest options are crap. and precheck is only available at terminal D which means AA doesn't have it (i just try and avoid DL on principle). i actually prefer EWR over JFK in general (i find they're both delayed just as much) and if i'm flying out of EWR, that means i'm flying UA.

2.) SWU's. my hit rate with them is still 100% to asia which is primarily where i use them, and i clear at booking. just need to be flexible with dates.

3.) SDC. used it a ton of times. i don't know what other airlines have in comparison to it, but this has saved my skin a number of times.

4.) east coast to asia. having a lot of nonstops out of EWR is nice. being able to hop onto a p.s. flight in C and connect to everywhere else i need to go is nice too.

chinatraderjmr

Why would you say "GF"??
Most airlines with 3 cabins have a MUCH better product then UA's GF. If your actually paying for International F, there is NO reason to fly UA and if your booking an award, GF would be my last choice of the partners

5khours

Agree

Fly SEA<>NRT a lot and UA has the only F product.


1. Better than old LH F.
2. Sometimes only availability is UA especially when travelling with wife or daughters and need more than 1 seat.
3. If no GF then no F awards on *A (a la DL and SkyTeam).

jpezaris

The primary reason I continue to fly UA is that I'm close to 1 million miles. After that threshold is hit (late 2014, if my projections work out), there will be a re-assessment. Since much of my family's travel is to parts of Europe that is best served by LH, however (and my wife really likes LH), it's likely I'll continue with UA.