SunLover

So a 1K purchasing a $5,000 EWR-NRT ticket would earn 55,000 miles plus the 1K additional RDM’s?

Better at this point just to purchase miles at 2 cents each.


SunLover

Duke777

For business travel, this is great. I'm spending $1k on transborder flights where I earn around 3,300 redeemable miles as a gold per trip. Now, I would earn 8,000.

For leisure travel, this is a huge devaluation.

From a strictly business sense, this makes sense. However, with UA's recent poor performance relative to peers, this move is going to anger a lot of people they can't afford to lose.

As others have said, once again UA copies DL. If only they could copy the good things about DL (e.g., wifi, service, meals, etc.).

In addition, this doesn't apply to *A carriers. Once you get your spend on UA, there's basically zero incentive to continue to fly UA when you have a choice of other *A carriers. I suffered through UA to get $10K PQDs and immediately switched my flying to AC since I was on UAX anyway.

edcho

The multiplication is the elite bonus. So only 55,000 RDMs for that 1K.

Billiken

UA is becoming the Sears & Roebuck of the airline industry.

eflyte

Nah, this incentivizes nothing but credit cards, unless you think that buying RDM at 9+ cents per is a good deal.

Chase friendly.

mh3265a

My question exactly

See that is not clear from the calculation chart and text on the webpage. It'd be great if we could get some real clarity to this point. You're probably right but not clear to me.

Also a fair point...

SFO777

Wow, simply wow. I've never actually seen a race to the bottom with only one participant. Yeah Jeff, that'll bring those HVFs back.

rosesplus

I love the way they announce and "more ways to spend your miles economy plus seating, economy plus subscriptions, checked baggage charges and more on the way" yep more nickel and diming coming............

boat9781

I hate these changes, but if you love travel you can still travel for travel's sake.

flynspill

I wonder if this will still include our bonus miles.

Tickets for flights operated by a Star Alliance™ or MileagePlus partner airline that aren’t issued by United (ticket numbers that don’t start with “016”) will still earn award miles based on distance flown and the purchased fare class.

richfish13

So as a Silver I would need to spend almost $3,600 next year to requalify, or spend over $7,000 to get Gold, to which neither level is worth even close to that spend for what you get. I'm sure an additional 'change I'll like' is the removal of complementary E+ for Silver as well next year. I've moved most of my flying over to AA, but being IAH based, SMI/J still has me by the balls on some fights.

oblisk

PQD didn't really affect me, but this will.

As a 1k who flies 95% for personal travel, being 100-110k miles a year on a 10-12k spend this will turn me into a kayaker. This is effectively a 40-50% devaluation of earned mileage, compounded with the devaluation of the mileage chart it is not helpful to retaining my business.

I'm just glad I'm finding out in June so i can direct the remaining 2014 travel elsewhere; it'll be nice to say good bye to EWR.

a9504477

So, would this apply also to UA flights not on 016 stock? And if not, what would be the best way of purchasing such?

eflyte

It's not particularly well worded, but I'm pretty sure this is saying no more class of service or premier bonuses (which makes sense, right, since ticket cost and membership level are both already in the new formula):

For tickets that will earn award miles based on ticket price, the class-of-service bonus and Premier bonus will be included in the number of award miles you earn per dollar

edcho

While UA Insider will probably clarify soon, I'd just look at DL . (I.e. The multiplication factor is the elite bonus but fare class bonuses still count)