Red_Rob

Image you fly say 48,000 miles on UA metal as 24 round trips, 48 segments, with each flight averaging 1,000 miles domestically at a cost (less taxes) of say $350 each. (flying 4 segments per month on UA metal). This gets you to $8400 at a fairly costly 17.5 CPM.

Imagine you also fly 4 international RT's on non UA * Alliance carriers in J (one per quarter). Say average BIS miles is 10K so PQM is 15K each.

In this case you have someone who pays a high CPM on UA (and likely an even higher CPM on other * Alliance carriers) who has 108K PQM, but does not get 1K This example is hardly extreme example.

In this example this hypothetical customer would have to:
A) Live with Platinum on UA (Customer loses)
B) Swap 1 international J flight to UA to hit 10K spend (UA wins, slight negative for flyer)
C) Leave UA (and possibly *A). (UA loses).

UA is betting more people will choose B than C, and that the general bad press of "things getting worse" will not impact customers other than the ones targeted. Only time will tell.

3Cforme

That is a correct interpretation. Partner flights need to be United-issued (the frequent references to 016 ticket stock).

luv2ctheworld

This has been the trend with DL's MQD as well.

On top of that, DL has devalued their Skyteam alliance earning; I suspect it has something to do with how they are structuring it so it can all funnel to DL.

This will be the next thing UA does as well in all likelihood.

username

My thoughts:

1 - good for people who can make it, bad for people who can't
2 - harder to get should mean better treatment of elites. Now there is a $ on our head, does that mean we can also demand more entitlements?
3 - at least the awards are not revenue based like WN
4 - so, it seems if codeshares that are operated by UA count - that is not bad but I wonder how they calculate the revenue - how do they determine what portion of the fare counts toward PQD?
5 - so, 1K = 100,000 miles or $10,000 but still nothing 1,000 about it

Biginch

just to speak out, i am not a mileage runner, i work 28 & 28 in the middle east, and this change will take me from 1K to no status purely because my employer likes to ticket through lufthansa. i fly as much united iron as possible usually going domestic and TATL on UA. UA does not serve the country i work in.

i guess i was over entitled,

no more mileage bonus,
no more international lounge access,
no cpu
no rpu,
no gpu,

why [Moderator edit] would i ever book another flight on united after this?

jlivengo

Read the formal notice, this change is only for people in the United States. Presumably to protect people in your situation.

UA-NYC

Check the financials - many of these people (myself included) have greatly curtailed their UA flying; some entirely. There's a reason why the financials don't show the return of HVFs.

So - you advocate the eventual demise of Star Alliance then? Because that's what will happen then if what you propose comes to fruitition.

Nope - they pulled them out of Delta's hat

sangho

I think the main effect of these changes will be in the numbers of 1Ks as the CC spending does not count (interestingly Delta does not have this restriction).

star_world

Reading between the lines, I strongly suspect UA's intent is to do the opposite of DL with regards to *A, but they don't have a technical solution for it yet that they're happy with. The 016 ticket restriction is, on the face of it, an odd one - it benefits the regional *A partners in many cases while penalizing the global ones (including the JV partners).

I suspect that the only reliable way UA has of counting revenue at the moment is through flights booked on its own ticket stock - the other links between the *A airlines are for award ticket booking and FFP mileage credit, neither of which include the transfer of revenue information.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the 016 limitation is removed in the future, perhaps with some reduction factor for *A dollars - e.g., each dollar spent on a partner counts for $0.50. Otherwise it would have made sense for UA to remove *A flights from the count altogether.

fly747first

Has anyone thought about the possibility that this is another trick by United? Smisek and his D+ management team know that UA has become the worst of the worst out there, so by following DL--an airline that previously failed miserably at changing its Medallion program, UA can easily manipulate things later to try to make us believe that UA is doing us a favor and not changing any of its major problems.

Here's the scenario:

DL's revenue-based component backfires and once again DL backtracks faster than a zebra trying to learn how to fly seconds away from being eaten by a crocodile.

Then, UA does not apologize and instead claims that they had opted to follow "industry trends," but that the airline is deeply concerned about its loyal flyers and will eliminate the revenue-based component. This way, UA makes us believe it is doing us a favor and we have no reason to cry over its pathetic inflight product, customer service (yes, clipping nails style!), and IT glitches, and thereby changing absolutely nothing except that in UA's minds, the airline gave us bloody noses and we will think twice about complaining again.

Well considering the number of underachievers that UA hires every year out of Embry-Riddle, we shouldn't be surprised. I once had the displeasure of sitting next to a Senior Analyst from UA on a DEN-IAH flight who didn't know that the former CO had a fleet of 757-300s. If their employees don't know something so basic, you really think they'd be able to perform in-depth financial analysis? Not if their lives depended on it.

mdspadeccom

The most difficult part of this for me is the requirement to buy 016 United tickets to get PQDs. You may have noticed that UA often does not code share flights on Star Alliance partners when there are possible ways to make the same trip on United. For example, Air New Zealand's nonstop San Francisco to Auckland is not a United code share. They want you to go through Sidney on United metal instead, even though it is much longer and much more expensive (several thousand dollars for business class on a date in February 2014, for example). Ditto Air Canada's non-stop Vancouver to Peking flight. And then there are the places where a Star Alliance partner offers a flight, United does not go there at all, yet United refuses to code share, e.g., Frankfurt to Bangalore on Lufthansa. Basically the new rules take away elite qualification as a benefit from these sorts of Star Alliance flights. Unless someone can tell me that a call to my friendly United telephone agent will get me an 016 ticket on the Air New Zealand non-stop San Francisco to Auckland (and at what price)?

jlivengo

I doubt it. I think these are designed to be incremental changes. If everything changed overnight, people would actually be following through with their abandon ship talk. Incrementally people will grumble but most won't revolt.

In this case however, there are actual repercussions to how people behave. For instance, will the loss of mileage runners offset people that select higher fares? Will UA lose out on people that normally purchased PQM from the premier accelerator?

UA1kMFR

As one of those "over entitled" UA FF and I saw this coming. I have flown nealry 3mm on United and fly enough to make sure I'll be 1k, even with this new plan. I just want to know when will the customer service now start to improve. You are making me spend more, shouldn't UA be required to take better care of me? Oh I know, there I go again, dragging customer service into the mix.

BackOfTheBus

Well, they've done it again! I am sure Jeff and his crew are toasting with champagne... Now their revenue will surely increase - and United's losses shall be erased!

I guess there were just too many of us Elites upgrading... such as on my FLL->SFO flight a few weeks ago, where First was sold out a full 2 weeks before departure. How dare we!!!

Agh, all those fancy things wasted on cheap-city elites (such as those living in DEN or So Fla) will now be reserved for the suckers who live in the fortress hubs (EWR/SFO...) or the screw-the-daylights-out-of-you overpriced small airports. Cheers!

star_world

Personally I think there's zero chance of this. They know exactly how many pax this will affect, how many are close to the thresholds, etc. After running those numbers they know which pax they are (intentionally) getting rid of, and are obviously comfortable with that decision.

The negative (comedically negative, sometimes - D+ ??? ) view of UA management is primarily a creation of the FT feedback loop - you'd be hard pressed to find a sizable group that concurs outside of here.