StringerBellBivDeVoe

You say that as if it is impossible for this to be a bad thing for anybody. There's been many people posting concise reasons why there may be negative effects to them because of this (unintended and otherwise).

rankourabu

AC NH SN

hookthem

This further dilutes 1K benefits from my perspective. I have no problem meeting the PQD requirement as-is, and frequently purchase first/biz. Unless they drastically raise the PQD threshold, this is a negative change.

PsiFighter37

One potential unintended consequence of this announcement is that people will fly UA less because it will take them less flights to hit status levels. This will add more PQMs for me and makes it more likely I will fly RT CPH-JFK on DL because I won't need the 8k PQM from that flight and would rather pay $1300 for RT in paid J.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

...but you won't get the chance for additional GPUs or RPUs that will be harder to use when everyone's a 1K

N515CR

And OS.

Dieuwer

Meaningless move, as you will NOT earn PQD flying *A carrier on *A carrier stock.

Richym99

I don't doubt that some may be negatively impacted by this personally, but lets just acknowledge first and foremost that contrary to the general level of predictions across this board that UA were going to continue to remove benefits for all frequent flyers, they have actually given us something extra. I cannot recall on single prediction from anyone that PQM earnings would be increased in any way in 2016, so anything that they give should be accepted as a bonus, not slated.

dvs7310

This goes into the "meh" category for myself as well. I'm mostly on partners intra-Asia or Asia-EMEA, so none of my usual flights get the PQM bump (though not expected, looks like its just the usual suspects anyway from a quick glance).

Boraxo

+1 ^ ^ ^

This works very well for business travelers who fly in paid C, though clearly it is intended as another carrot to steer us to UA-metal where both EQM and RDM will be higher.

Clearly some *A partners are favored more than others, to wit:

Compare:

LH = 200% for C/F
ANA = 150-300% for C/F

With:

SQ = 100-125% for C
TK = 100-125% for C

I am still looking for the bad news which usually accompanies announcement of enhancements.... so far so good

With all due respect that's absurd. Nobody is going to pay hundreds or thousands to "buy up" just for a few EQMs. Anybody who truly values F is already paying for it - in many cases the price differential is not that significant (i.e. I'm only paying $200 for Y->F for 6 hours of flying from Mexico to USA - almost the same price as those 500mi upgrades used to cost).

Rather, the objective here is to incentivize customers to fly on UA's inferior international C/F product instead of *A like SQ etc. without spending millions to upgrade the product. And it may very well work for those at the margins - I would forego SQ if it meant I could achieve 1K rather than 1P.

Ding, ding, ding! Correct answer. As predicted elsewhere, it is only a matter of time before status is 100% based on $$$ instead of miles. And then it's game over for the mileage runners and the credit card churners.

chitownflyer

Excellent.

chleonard

+1, sadly I fall into the same group I have a lot of long-haul work travel scheduled this year (so far already have booked 2 round-trip TATLs in Jan, and have a likely TPAC in Feb - all in Y) and this pretty much kills any enthusiasm I had for possibly making 1K this year or for that matter even trying to stay loyal to UA. What's the point if they're just giving away status to the folks who don't need it in the first place?

That being said, I can see the rationale, will definitely encourage more folks to pay their way into F/J.

schnitzer

Is million miler status earned based on distance flown? or the PQM?

WineCountryUA

MM uses BIS (with 500 mile min for elites)

ECOTONE

so happy about this.