margarita girl

I'm anxious to hear if 100% 1K tier bonus will still exist when flying other airlines on their ticket stock, eg AC on 014 ticket stock. That hasn't been made clear yet and will certainly affect where I choose to post my miles on an upcoming AC ticket.

Vulcan

My wife (Gold) flew TPA-IAH-PHX on 2/27 and received 2693 RMS. On the return, 3/3, she received 1056. This shows you what the future is.

WineCountryUA

there is a separate thread on http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/unite...-1-2015-a.html

Where this is posted

greg99

It's pretty easy, actually. I just did it 2 weeks ago SFO-NYC.

I'm a mixed bag - I do business trips on the West Coast (big win), transcon (big lose, because I usually book a couple of weeks in advance) and internationally (big win because it's in C). The issue is that I do quite a bit of leisure travel, especially international, and I will lose *big time*.

The determinant for me will be how much international business travel I do. If it's low, I'll come out behind under the old system. If it's 2 trips or more, I probably come out ahead.

The problem is that the package of changes that UA has made (especially the near elimination of domestic upgrades) recently has made my 1K membership much less valuable to me than my default MM Gold membership, so I'm more likely to spread that international C travel around to other carriers.

Perversely, the only thing keeping me from moving all of my international C travel is the possibility of upgrading C to F with GPU's on LH.

Greg

caseminole

Ahhhhhh. Ok I get that. Thank u!

jsloan

I've been tracking PQDs since they announced them, so I had an easy reference point. I went back and looked, and I did not have one single trip where I would have come out ahead under the new system. Why? Because I live in Austin, which is usually a competitive market for airfare and which frequently involves a connection, and because I normally book both business and personal travel 2-3 weeks in advance, in accordance with both company policy and an interest in saving money. This includes the two P fares I purchased for personal travel last year, provided that I take the class-of-service bonus into account. Also, your $450 challenge would be for one-way travel. Here are just a few fares less than $900 round-trip from coast to coast:

SEA/BOS: $258 (G)
SFO/MIA: $260 (G)
LAX/JFK: $268 (G)
PDX/ATL: $420 (T)
SMF/RIC: $412 (T)
BOI/ALB: $390 (T)

All fares from EF, showing fares on UA for all travel dates -- and these aren't cherry-picked, either. I did six searches and got six winners.

I have no problem with the airlines giving more rewards to people who pay more. They could have done so by increasing fare basis code multipliers, adding class-of-service bonuses, adding a "every $1,000 PQD -> 10,000 extra RDMs" clause, or whatever they cared to do so. Heck, they could have kept the current system, eliminated the 75K cap, and said that they'd reward customers per trip based upon whichever policy earned more miles. Instead, they chose to balance the books by penalizing flyers like me in order to give more rewards to flyers like you. That's their right, but they shouldn't be surprised when I start looking around for other carriers who value my business more than UA does.

UA is betting that they'll bring more HVFs to their airline -- presumably mostly on routes where DL is noncompetitive due to limited service, needing a connection, or whatnot -- and that there is a steady stream of cost-conscious customers who will fill the rest of the plane regardless of mileage policies. They may even be right; the value of free E+ as a gold/plat who books in advance is non-trivial, and I tend to check luggage, especially on leisure trips. Minus a status match, UA works out to be the cheapest option. Migrating to DL to avoid UA's new policies seems like cutting off my nose to spite my face. AA is an option, but I'd like to give them another year or two to decide if they're going to be USdbaAA or AAdbaUS.

bocastephen

Incentivizing a higher spender is fine - however doing it while basically deliberately screwing everyone else is not fine. Truthfully this is all smoke and mirrors accounting. Someone incorrectly decided that outstanding miles should be a liability on the books, which I strongly disagree with given there is no actual liability or cost until a ticket is redeemed - until that happens, RDMs are nothing but pixie dust floating around waiting for inventory and demand to come together, which in many cases, never happens.

Comparing to the hotel award scheme is not a fair comparison - hotels award based on spend at a basic level, but given the layers and layers of various promotions and bonuses, the actual points that appear in the account bare little resemblance to the final value of the folio.

While there may or may not be dark clouds on the horizon for AA, for now they're doing it right - incentivizing higher spend without screwing bread and butter customers.

LaserSailor

Nobody was getting screwed, before or now.

HVF were getting about 5% rebates, LVF were getting 30%

now both are getting the same percentage discount off their spend if they are at the same status.

FF miles are a financial liability and accounting rules typically allow a historical overall use rate of 80%. Approximately 20% of miles expire unused. These facts stein airlines financials, public documents ( or can be calculated from statements therein)

myb821

I'm more annoyed by the 75,000 cap. I manage my FIL account who is GS. He is going to a conference that just booked him a ticket that is $12,400 and he will still only earn 75,000 really frustrating.

Mike Jacoubowsky

But you can't get around two facts-

#1: UA is giving out far fewer miles than before.
#2: UA has massively reallocated (compared to last year) the miles they are giving out.

You can argue that it's a fairer system this year, and I'll go along with that. But you can't say, at the same time, that nobody was getting screwed last year, because if the new system is more fair, then the HVFs last year were not getting their fair share.

Neil35

I don't understand the rationale behind the 75,000 cap. Has anyone come up with a likely answer yet?

And it is so unfair to the best of the best customers.

ptc8329

I think it was copied from Delta . Has anyone been booking one ways instead?

bob_the_d

out of curiosity, before the switch what would the RDM count have been in the old system?

restlessinRNO

Likely much less than 75,000 RDM.

Mike Jacoubowsky

Maybe the whole "entitled" issue that bothers United so much about its elites is really at the root of... everything. United could be looking at the uber-rich and thinking, what do they need with even more RDMs? They're rich already! Similar to the arguments about whether it makes sense to pay out Social Security to somebody who really doesn't have a need for it. It doesn't matter that they "paid into it." What matters is that it's silly for them to care. Speaking from UA's viewpoint.