fjfv19

Bingo. United's PQDs mean people may concentrate additional spending on the Chase issued United credit cards to eliminate the PQD thresholds. The awards changes can have several effects, one of which being that people need to focus more spending on Chase products to hit the same award redemption. FTers aside, the average person may shift additional spend from other cards to plug the new gap. While there is clearly downside, I have to imagine either (a) Chase is convinced the positives outweigh the negatives, (b) United convinced Chase the positives outweigh the negatives or (c) Chase is indifferent and going along for the ride because its not like there is another legacy carrier to rope in.

If it proves to be correct and is reflected in United's financials, then AA/US are next, so there is really nowhere to run. C'est la vie.

myb821

No just raised the prices dramatically

lhrsfo

I was considering either Europe to South America or Europe to Australia. If I read the new charts correctly, the former is cheaper on *A than it is on UA in premium cabins, which seems odd. Also, Europe to Australia is cheaper than Europe to South America. All weird.

BKKLEE

+1, just another DYKWIA (acts the same way over on the Marriott forum)

MileCards

The cheaper *A Europe to South America makes sense. You need 2 longhaul UA metal flights for that. While via *A good chance you're routing on a single Lufthansa flight.

FlyingCOS

So at this point what exactly does United hang their hat on? I think a lot of people were unhappy with United but I hung on with them because imo their miles were the best ones out there. One of the worst parts about this is how much it devalues Chase cards. I guess my trip next week will be my first and last in Lufthansa first.

fjfv19

Route network, 787, pretty good hard product and the promise that at some point, in a future that almost certainly doesn't exist, they'll be some changes we like.

golfingboy

Wow, they messed with one of my two primary reasons for sticking with UA.

Good job UA

UA you have to remember, now with this change, you are the worst at almost every category that is important to me except for SDC. Congratulations.

I expected an increase of 5-20K in pretty much all categories. Not this change. It is very obvious some people are in panic mode including Smisek when he told investors that they are going to make swift changes in the short term to improve their financial results. This is definitely part of it with the massive increases.

halls120

For much of the last year during the "who is really leaving UA" debate, the Jeff apologists would correctly note that Skypesos made DL a bad option. I wonder what they are going to do now that Jeff has moved MileagePlus into that same territory?

None of the recent rollbacks - losing EF, raising the award redemption rates - should be a surprise to anyone. Compared to the competition, UA's were far too generous. When you add to the mix the fact that UA hasn't been able to realize all those merger synergies they were bragging about and they are financially lagging the competition, it is almost a given that as passengers we are going to see a continued downgrading of the United product and an increased hit to our wallets.

Next up? I'm guessing that they will do something other than hiding R space to make it even more difficult to use GPUs.

MileageMinus

mobilebucky

Do AA still offer status match for this 1k?

civicmon

I'm looking for the answer to this question. I want to burn the remaining miles I have to SEAsia and I'm more than happy to book by Feb 1 and miss the increase if I can make changes with the standard caveats w/ changes.

I'm only sitting on about 65k miles for a Y award and not looking forward to a 15k increase to SEAsia

CelticIAH

Gonna miss the 35k R/T intra-Asia biz routings...had some good times with those.

However, 60k R/T from South Asia to Australia/NZ in business?? I'll take that..

cova

Wow - these increases are huge.
US - Europe now 220K in F on *A and 160K in F on UA (was 135K on both).
UA F isn't worth 160K miles to Europe and now 220K for LH F makes that impractical.

I guess the difference between UA metal and *A metal rewards is that UA premium services are so bad compared to other carriers - that people would book UA then switch to the other carriers when they opened inventory.

I was doing most of my credit card charging on Chase for UA miles rather then Citibank for AA miles. But now I may need to rethink that.

Many people are waiting for this answer.

ualisthebst

(I checked the calendar to see if it was April 1st....but it isn't)

My biggest issue isn't with this specific change, it's the fact that this airline regularly and consistently announce negative changes that degrade the overall customer experience. I seriously think a group of UA execs sit around and think they have the best product out there (Direct TV/787/Wifi/planes with cool lighting) when in reality their product is severely lacking compared to their competitors in just about every aspect.

Take the food in F for example; Yesterday they announced another downgrade by no longer serving full meals on flights under 900 miles to "align ourselves with the marketplace". Correct me if I'm wrong, but UA's food isn't even close to what their competitors offer. How can you align when you never were aligned to begin with??

My point is just to say that I truly believe UA management is completely and utterly delusional.

This airline has become an absolute joke.

goingbananas

Drachma Miles is my vote.