billycwhatup

Here is a link

whitethunder

interesting read, glad to see the Flyertalk mention in there

SFO777

Interesting... but I get the same treatment every time I fly Lufthansa to/from Frankfurt. Plus, I get to fly a quality airline.

United747

+1. It was a interesting article.

Singapore_Schwing

It pretty much sums up my frustrations flying ~237k last year and likely more this year. No GS for me. Typically W and higer, though I know that's crap vs the Y, C, and F fares they want.

Luckily I will be moving overseas so will be able to move my flights away (even back and forth to the US) if I don't get it next year.

boat9781

Great article. Bus so far as attaining the status is concerned, spend ~$40-45K for a fighting chance; spend $60K to lock it in. And those on full fare tickets have a better shot.

mike1968

The article is just another sad, uaCO can't win for trying mess. The subliminal advertising with Chase is bad enough...we know the uaCO experience is truly awful so use this credit card to get a slightly less awful experience...but this article just talks about what a PITA it is to fly The CO version of UA...a 4 hour delay here, a cancelled long haul international there. It definitely doesn't create a sense of envy... Rather a thank god I pulled the rip cord and to go with airlines that still treat the $20k for 1P type-flyer quite well. If I had never flown UA, it certainly wouldn't encourage me to want to do so given how poorly it implies everyone else below a GS is treated, including paid F/C flyers below GS. To spend F/C/GS money on this CO engineered mess, and for the now systemwide CO version of a front cabin just seems crazy at this point. I mean its nice they will do something for a GS when the can't routinely and reliably run their network as illustrated in the article...but I think most of us would show someone who comes to work everyday and thinks aiming for 80%/C+ is spectacular, the door.

malgudi

It is a puff piece ... not sure what's "great" about the article.

UA gave WSJ a "rare peek"! Surely, they weren't going to write anything negative?

Neil35

If UA's GS program is such a "secretive, invitation-only club" why is UA revealing the secrets NOW?

I have read many stories on this forum since 3/3/2012 about GS members losing upgrade opportunities as a result of aggressive TOD upsells. Are those stories not true?

Has the treatment of GS improved to a point resembling what this article is describing?

spin88

This is what the Journal has become under Murdock. I am sure that UAL promised some $$$$ in ads for this piece. Obviously, little effort went into researching it, he just put down what UAL told him too.

The comments though are interesting. 99% of them are negative on UAL... comment on what a horrible airline it has become...

p.s. GS is now better than it was in 2012, but its a sad version of what it used to be. Not really worth much at this point.

jgsx

I thought the article downplayed what a good GS gets. I kept waiting for the piece to describe one of the miracles that I've become used to.

Neil35

Very interesting. Obviously there are many things about GS benefits that I haven't read about.

demkr

Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_4 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B350 Safari/8536.25)

The only thing about GS is there's really a major benefits gap between it and 1K.

GS may be profitable, but it puts UA at a competitive disadvantage when "top tier" 1Ks arent really top tier like DL Diamonds or AA EXPs

5khours

Real puff piece. Depends on your flying patterns, but IMHO, other than feel good there is not too much benefit to GS these days. As someone else mentioned, UA has so trashed their GF product, that real premium flyers are probably going to be on LH or another carrier (which provide much better service and product than UA regardless of status).

CO_Nonrev_elite

A high number of them are actually folks that barely ever fly. CEO's and folks in charge of big money corporations and people responsible for big spend. It is given also to some people to try and retain corporate contracts that as most are aware, UA are losing by the day. Most Globals I know personally fall directly into the above category. You can also usually spot them because they are disruptive on the plane as they ask for things out of order and throw fits etc.

I'm not saying the GS on this forum fall into that category, they obviously fly and have a passion for it, but you'd be amazed at how many are not.