mgcsinc

^

Not just fly larger planes, but fly larger planes with the effect of decreasing net revenue!

LaserSailor

If I had to crystal ball 2015 I would guess this captures it. MR will end because miles will be devalued for anyone below 1K so that they can't be used, ergo they won't be worth chasing. Spend them now.

DaviddesJ

Your theory is that UA doesn't get to choose how many tickets to offer, at what price? Who do you think is imposing those choices on them, the Illuminati? This is just getting weird.

mgcsinc

Whaaaaaaaaaaaa?

That's your own theory, sir.

DaviddesJ

I don't understand the theory that says if there were no MRs then UA would have to offer exactly the same number of tickets of each fare class on every flight. I think it's obvious they wouldn't.

flyersky1

Even if UA reduces capacity, there would always be times and routes when the seats will fly unoccupied if the price is too high. Thus, there would be always sales and MR fares, which will be profitable for UA at the margin. Furthermore, there are the occasional price wars that maybe unprofitable per se but are in the long run strategic games.

I agree too!

DaviddesJ

Sure. But that's not where the fares taken by MRers come from.

Safeway doesn't sell oranges at a loss only when they have already sold all of the oranges they can sell at a profit, and they have some left over. Neither does UA.

mre5765

Great, go resolve this question in the PQD's thread's wikipost.

mgcsinc

So, are you saying that they would run the same planes but charge more for tickets (economically impossible), or that they're currently running bigger planes to make space for ultra-discount fares (insane)?



Where do they come from, the stork?

exerda

LOL, so you're claiming that MRers buying cheap tickets somehow cause UA to want to sell more of those cheap tickets? That's about the most ridiculous logic I've ever read.

Someone will buy the cheap tickets which UA offers. Inventory Management chooses how many of those (and at what price, and when) to offer those.


No one has made that claim.

The claim is that UA chooses to offer some tickets at a cheap price, and those tickets are going to be bought, be they by MRers or Kettles or business travelers. UA still offers pricier tickets, so the cheap tickets aren't displacing pax who would otherwise elect to buy the pricier ones (for flexibility, for example), and UA IM won't offer the cheap tickets if they think they can sell pricier ones (and that's what capacity controls are on the cheap buckets!).

However, if you think UA is offering cheap tickets because they're being bought by MRers, that's some pretty twisted reasoning. Someone is buying the cheapo tickets (which UA chooses to offer, BTW; no one is forcing them to do so, except, of course, if they were to pull a WN and claim to be running a sale and then not offer a single ticket at that price--then the FTC might have some arm-twisting to perform, but that's a different matter entirely).

chinatraderjmr

^^^. But then again I think anyone that would get in a plane for no reason other then to take a ride lacking in mental health anyway

What would people think of someone who just took lots of taxis around and around for no reason other then to be considered a good customer of the taxi company ???

The best part of the new $$ qual minimums is not the actual thinning of the ranks, but the fact that more and more 1K's will have this status for no other reason then they MUST spend a lot of time flying (what the whole point of the program is for). IMHO there are a lot of reasons to really enjoy a good flight. However, the biggest part of that is either looking forward to getting to the destination or in many cases looking forward to getting home from a biz trip. But these "enjoyable" flights are usually on a foreign carrier, almost always in F or J, etc, etc.
----What is the point of flying needlessly in E / E+ from one crummy domestic destination to another or even flying R/T to a great destination but not even spending a night just to get some ridiculous status??? There are some that spend say, 200 hours a year on mileage runs, sucking up crowded planes & crummy service just so the next year you can spend 50 hours on a plane as a 1K

Sorry for the rant nut I just don't get anyone going out of their way or spending 1 extra dollar, euro, or pound to get status. Think of all the $$ spent by people doing needless flying and spending needless $$

I'd rather fly twice a year with no status as a full fare F passenger on a great airline then fly 20 times with Status on a crummy airline. But hay. I just felt like getting this off my chest

eloraculo

I thought everyone was "moving out" of the country.

flyersky1

That's exactly where they come from. Plus the fare wars that I mentioned.

Quiltingatty

Which credit cards are you talking about that will get around the spending floor of $10K for 1K?? I'm not going to try to spend $10K of my own money to maintain my 1K status. if there's another way to achieve it, I'd like to know what that would be!!

mgcsinc

You gotta spend $25K on UA-branded Chase cards, or have a certain legacy card.

But you can only get to Plat that way, not to 1K.