tom911

Was there a point you were trying to make with all those numbers?

UA-NYC

If you can book that as one ways without jacking up the price, more power to you.

Still a 75k cap on any single PNR.

chitownflyer

I have fond memories of my last United trip in the 90's United International First. At this time, there were no lie flat seats, but there was caviar, Don Perignon, Godiva chocolates, an excellent 5 course meal, and service exemplary of a 5 star hotel. I also received a full box of Godivas for my onward journey.

embarcadero1

I mostly fly to Europe, so there weren't any routes where UA flew direct. The only route where I can't find a good substitute is SFO-YVR.

The flight to PVR left about 10:30 and arrived about 3:30, maybe that's somehow in between meal hours?

embarcadero1

Not yet. That practice from UA really takes the cake. When AA sells you an up fare, the disclosures are very clear in the purchase process. I've been in IRROPS on BA and they put me back in C, no questions asked, no fighting with agents required.

FlyWorld

Isn't AC a decent option for SFO YVR?

Wow. Great to hear you've encountered analogous situations with AA and BA, and they did the legal and ethical thing to give you what you paid for.

SFO777

Not any more. AC flights are now operated by their LCC Rouge... basically Euro-style Y seats with an open middle in "Business class"

embarcadero1

Exactly! Those 29 inches of leg room make it more cramped than a city bus.

BearX220

My wife is going SEA-IAH-DCA tomorrow, I just checked her in, and E+ is WIDE open for both legs. As in, maybe six or eight seats taken. I flew BOS-SFO-SEA earlier this month and it was the same story -- in fact, I got comped into 8D on the second leg by a GA who didn't want to bother collecting the E+ upcharge. I had all of row 8 to myself. Are these isolated data points or do they illustrate the "donut hole" theory that UA is doing well with a small cohort of GS types, a bunch of penny-pinching Kayakers, and few in between?

Flyflyguy

She's traveling on a Weds, which is one of the 3 slow days (T, W, Sa). I wouldn't read too much into it.

transportbiz

Update: I got a call from a very nice lady at AA last week, out of the blue just to check and see how I was enjoying my EXP status. I explained how I felt about the requalification issue, and her immediate response was "well, let's see what we can do to make things work for you." It was such a refreshing change, after the last few years of responses from UA that were basically "well, those are the rules, sorry". So my challenge begins in July, and will cover me through until Feb. 2017. The flight I have in June I was able to keep my MCE seat, and she also put 500-mile segment upgrades for FC if it does come available, it's only LAX-SFO so I'm not stressing it. I get group one boarding, so it's all good. I've already booked enough flights to meet the challenge, just with what I'd planed to travel anyways. I was even awarded 2 SWU's for my September European trip, because I will still be in the challenge period, and not have the 8 that come with real EXP status. AA representative listened, and responded, really not giving away the store, which is not what I ever expect, but moving things around to make them work for my situation. It's really isn't rocket science. So, what have I jumped ship?

Changes I don’t like:
• Freshbrew coffee (coming from pmCO, really was looking forward to good coffee on morning flights)
• Slimline Seats
• Disgruntled employees and labor groups. (though AA may have some of this too)
• “Dark” planes, bring your own screen and no power
• Complete annihilation of CPU’s (routes I fly, my experience, YMMV)
• R bucket inventory reduced or eliminated, GPU’s expire in bank unused
• Increase in mileage costs for *A partner flights.
• Decrease in award availability to practically nothing (routes I want, my experience, YMMV)
• Reduction in RDM’s far beyond what I expected or consider a reasonable transition (my POV)
• Horrible boarding process, it’s just chaos on large body planes.
• Dropped destinations
• Down gauging, and flight reductions
• On time performance and IRROPS handling
• Overall perception that my business isn’t valued, 1K status is meaningless, and maybe it isn’t I can accept that if United doesn’t value a customer who spends $10-$15K year in and year out, it’s not a good match (my personal opinion, YMMV)

Uncompetitive issues:

• Four across seating in C
• No pillows in domestic first
• Food and beverage worst in industry
• United Club food and beverage downgrades (new things announced, but not much)
• $200 change fee on tickets even at 1K status
• On time performance
• IRROPS handling


Operational failures:

• Four leg trip where all four legs were downgraded due to maintenance issues. Granted I got 4 $250 ETV’s but I couldn’t use them all on one ticket, another customer last policy in my opinion.
• Countless delays, maintenance issues and misconnects. It was so bad that I’d expect to not arrive on time, or even close to it, if I really had to be there for something mission critical, fly in a day early and pay for an extra night’s hotel. Delay and delay compensation got to be so routine, that United began to implement specific policies to not compensate for anything less than a 5 hour delay. I have dozens of examples over the past 4 years, one joke of a flight with 4 segments, had maintenance issues, on one segment there were MX delays with three separate aircraft, LAX-IAH cancelled, rebooked on LAX-EWR delayed three hours, rebooked back to IAH, that flight takes a MX, finally back to another EWR flight, that one goes, only to connect to a flight in EWR that…yes, you guessed it, it to too takes a MX delay. One flight booking in full-fare first class, LAX-DTW via ORD took an MX on the first segment, substituted plane to a much smaller one, not only did I lose my FC seat, but they bumped me from the flight entirely. I asked for a printed ticket, walked over to Delta, they were very happy to take the $2,100 to fly me to DTW. Too many of these to write and get into, it’d be a novel.
• Random seat changes, quite frequent, when I’d have a bulkhead in BF (wider foot wells) or a 2 seat side on the miserable pmUA 777 where I want to avoid the center section. I’ve had the seat reserved for months in many cases, and it’d change at boarding, some GA would move me to accommodate a “DKWIM”, last time, on LAX-LHR, I put my foot down, and said no way was I going to accept it, I had the boarding pass with my seat and expected it to be honored.
• Ancient history, but yeah I got caught up pretty bad in the reservation system merger failures. Spending extra days in Peru, and eventually, flying home in coach, despite being booking in First. And several other reservations vanishing, into thin air.

Ethical failures:

• Merging the CO small business program into PerksPlus, and changing the value of the points, at a ratio of 10:1 and notify members AFTER the effective date.
• Charging redeposit and change fees on award tickets regardless of 1K elite status.
• Offering a much lower compensation than what is mandated by EU261 (via united.com/appreciation) in an effort to deceive customers so they will not know about, and not pursue the mandated compensation.
• Failure to provide EU261 information on flights delayed from Europe
• Charging small charges to credit cards on file, without notification, I’ve had these mysterious charges on my credit card statement several times, and upon research find it’s because a fare changed during booking, and UA decided to just charge it separately.

tom911

I'd be interested if you beat your 12.5% domestic upgrade rate going from UA to AA. Please come back and update us as that progresses.

As to some of your UA issues, they'll also be AA issues. AA MD80s have no IFE, and although they are being phased out there are still something over 100 left in the fleet. AA is taking a new aircraft delivery every week, so the end is near for the MD80 fleet. I've always found the F seat in that aircraft very roomy and will miss them myself.

As to increased mileage for partner travel, AA has not gone there yet, though two partners do have fuel surcharges you have to watch for. Maybe things balance out with that compared to paying the extra miles for some in international partner F with UA partners.

There's been some media coverage that Cathay may block F seats for their own flyers and require increased miles for partner award travel (10-13,000 mile increase per one blogger), but for right now nothing has changed there.
Cathay to cut available award seats?

Last time I ran into irregular ops on AA, they protected me on a nonstop BA flight to London. Ended up not having to take it as the AA flights were able to make up some of the time come departure and I made my LAX-LHR connection with a special shuttle bus AA ran for those of us coming down from SFO with international connections (terminal change).

skiandsail1k

I've been a 1K for 10+ years and have around 1.5M lifetime UA miles. I'm based in BOS and fly pretty consistently to SFO and a few international destinations. I used to get CPUs pretty regularly on my domestic flights but I haven't even cracked the top 10 on an upgrade list in months with no CPUs at all this year. I'm starting to fly a lot more to LHR now. This means routing through EWR or IAD and adding a few hours on my trips each way.
Should I look at this as an opportunity to try my fortunes with a new airline? There are a few that service LHR directly and I certainly couldn't get upgraded any less frequently than I do now.

scruffair

Yes! How have you not switched already??

1k-all-the-way

Yeah..I feel your pain. This is likely my last year to try for 1k. My situation is slightly different being a SFO captive with Europe, Asia and USA trips, but I'm getting tired of paying money every year to enable the declining performance...... At some point you just feel like a chump.....