Disclaimer: Purely speculation here. I have no knowledge and only sharing a limited conversation with someone who isn’t directly tied to the department who would directly be making the decision.

I was on a call today with UA trying to look at an awards flight. Given some complexities, I was escalated to a “Lead” who was able to assist me. During the conversation, we got to talking about how redeemable miles (RDM) are earned today based upon spend and casually was mentioning difficulty on me planning sometimes as I don’t always know what the fares will be when I book the flight vs in the past I could project RDMs earned based upon knowing where I was going to fly and the distance. At one point, I mentioned how sometimes it’s depressing to see certain segments post such small dollar amounts and the redeemable miles I earned even with the 1K multiplier.

After stating that, she made an innocent comment to me on the phone that at the time I didn’t think to probe further on. She mentioned during one of their “leads” meetings earlier in the week, there was mentioned that in 2017, the multiplier would be potentially increasing and she stated it would be a “great thing for me” as I could earn miles more quickly per dollar spent.

Of course, I was focused on just getting my award tickets arranged and just said that is awesome. I didn’t probe more, and I think even if I did, her knowledge around it may have been limited.

Tonight, got to thinking, if they are talking about increasing the multiplier per dollar spent to give us more redeemable miles, that is starting to make me think they are going to increase the miles required to book an award ticket in 2017….meaning, our current mileage balance will see a devaluation. This is pretty common among loyalty programs that our miles will begin to devalue over time. I’m just sharing this as an FYI of what I’ve heard.

But my take is that Oscar has seen the light that driving away elites did not help the bottom line.

They have to know (Delta certainly does...) the problems created by lack of award availability, and I just don't see the current management team (after the massive cuts under Smisik) cutting the bond between 25K miles and a free ticket, or raising the already very high price of *A seats, nor for UA's BF seats. I don't think the blow back would work well for them, with an already restive (and we now know badly leaking) elite base.

I do think that upping the RDM by 1 mile per $1 spend at each level would not cost United a lot (since availability remains the same) but would allow them to distinguish themselves from OALs, so don't see that as out of the cards.

Color me optimistic that Oscar is not going to further cut benefits. [And yes, I know the recent status bumps was a huge cut, but I honestly don't think they understood/through through what they were doing.]

Make RDMs the GREATER of the current multiplier or flown miles. That would be a PLUS in MileagePlus.

It still wouldn't be nearly as good as 2x RDM based on flown miles for PremExec. But it would be something.