TexasMatthew

I'm normally a silver who flies around 35-40k miles/year ... so if you account for my spend, it's a little over the $2,500 minimum.

But I've been silver for many years surviving off of 3 itineraries/year ... 2 roundtrip Europe flights (11k miles roundtrip each) and 1 domestic roundtrip ticket (3k miles / 1500 each way)

Can anyone speculate as to what percentage of the silver pool this is that barely makes silver ... with this new PQD requirement ... with my 35-40k miles/year, I'll barely hit the $2,500 ... so I imagine there will be a TON of folks who do what I did, 3 itineraries year, minus taxes is something like $1,900/year ... not even near the minimum.

I'm also sure there will be LOTS of downgrades from gold to silver ... platinum to gold ... and 1k to platinum. Does UA have a goal to reduce the overall elite pool by a certain percent?

mahasamatman

Only United know, but I don't think that's the specific goal. I suspect it's more like trying to get rid of the no-value elites so the only elites will have some value to the airline.

jasonp622

don't forget the cc spend to waive pdq

Air Houston

My guess is 42%. Someone please let me know if I have won anything for the closest guess.

I don't think UA is nearly as interested in getting rid of a few Silvers or Golds or Platinums as they are interested in getting a few people to spend a little more money to secure their premier status. Imagine the impact to the top line if every Premier spends an extra $500 to secure their "earned" status level. It could have a huge impact.

PDXPremier

I wouldn't have made Silver on UA again this year....I can't think of any year in which I spent $2,500....not even close except MAYBE the one year I made Premier Ex (Gold), but I am fairly certain I didn't hit $2,500 then either. I've been maintaining elite status on UA for years now, but since it's mainly personal travel (that I fund myself), I usually try to keep most trips in the 3-4cpm range unless it's a trip I NEED to take regardless of cost.

I think United's intent was to drop elites like me that maintain their status through exciting mileage runs to IST or LIM (or DTW...oh I know, not exciting, but at 2-3cpm last September, I couldn't pass it up).

It's all good though....time to make room for the "real" elites The ironic thing is that I've switch to AS this year and will make MVP (Silver) by May and MVPG (Gold) by October....all for around $2500 or (probably) less so it's all good

PDXPremier

Or if 42% take their $1500 elsewhere....

kmfdm91

Sadly, I didn't really think about this at all before this past weekend (coming back from Spring Break).

I've been a 1K for the past 6+ years, but this year, i'll finish at best as Plat, due to the PQD. I have a Chase card and will meet the US$25k spend requirement and will try not to get anything past 75k EQM.

That said, my wife who has been up to a 1K in years past is now only a Silver this year. Next year, she most likely won't qualify for Silver (even with over 25k EQM) because of the PQD. We only have 1 Chase card, so she most likely won't qualify at all.

Currently as of 23 April, I'm sitting at 30,115EQM with only US$1,115 PQD, so I wouldn't even hitting the US$2,500 spend at >50,000EQM at the current rate.

I'll see what I'm going to do with my wife, but it definitely won't be on a 'dollar run', if anything it will be on an A3 run with bare minimum classes to grab *G!

-jeremy

PDXPremier

I'm sorta in the same boat....my wife typically travels with me so we can both maintain status so the 25K on the credit card doesn't really help since that is PER PERSON and I would barely be able to spend 25K on a Chase card myself (and it would be a lot of hassle I don't want).

jag932

The interesting numbers to see would be what percentage retain Silver through miles and spend and what percentage do it through miles and a Chase card. I suspect the CC will play a big role in this. In my case I will get there with miles and spend, but that may be the exception rather than the rule.

mahasamatman

I doubt it. Outside the nanocosm of FT, there just aren't that many people who will chase worthless status.

PDXPremier

No pun intended??

horse glasses

It's very likely the PQD will keep me from any status next year, even though I'll probably have the miles/segments pretty easily.

Also we both have Chase cards, but there is no way we spend 25k in a year on them. I don't even think we could.

UnitedWeStand

I like to think the majority of silvers get their status through mostly domestic USA travel. I may be a little biased due to the fact that I qualify for silver every year through domestic travel.

I'm going to say only 10% of silvers will lose status due to the PQD requirement. FWIW so far in 2014 I sit with ~9,400 PQM and $3,287 PQD.

kmfdm91

I agree 100 per cent. There is no many people will try to spend (or worry about spending US$25k on a single card) just to acquire silver status on UA that doesn't give them much at all. If most had that much money, either they don't even know about the new PQD rules or would shell out cash for E+ on booking or bags anyways...

I'm not sure how many people do this, but if you take a single round-trip flight from WAS-SYD (and naturally, there are other lucrative routings/city pairs), that set of flights (4 minimum) would net almost 20,000EQM. Unless you are buying a high fare basis, you'll not get anywhere close to US$2,500 PQD on that trip, so with another simple transcon r/t, there will be a bunch of people in the boat of taking theoretically as few as two trips all year that cross the 25k EQM mark, but aren't at US$2.5k PQD...

Maybe that's me and oversimplifying things, but there probably are the types that fly a few trips a year that are tpac or to s.america that might not meet the PQD, but hit the EQM mark.

-jeremy

LHCVG

Here's my question about that: presumably there will be indeed be a number of folks who fall into that category (not large, but a decent handful). Do you think UA will be willing to offer them a deal for status if they meet the PQM metric but not PQD spend, like in this example?

I'm not weighing in morally, just wondering aloud how they will handle that when people cross the threshold on BIS terms (either miles or segments), but somehow miss the PQD value by a few bucks (emphasis on the few bucks -- I'm not talking about some miracle mileage run that got you 25k miles for say $1,500).