Ber2dca

I don't think you could ever assume that once you gain status in a FFP an upgrade is guaranteed on all flights at all times. There have always been caveats, and as mentioned before these caveats are certainly something airlines are at liberty to change based on their business needs.

mduell

CPU rates have to get worse to hit all the major airlines targets of 70% first class monetization.

AirbusFan2B

This comes down to long term brand building - or lack thereof. United is quickly deteriorating its brand equity among its most valuable consumers ostensibly because its two other monopolistic competitors are doing same. UA can get away with it in the short term but, rather than building long term equity, UA is screwing its top elites in favor of small incremental revenue streams from kettles. And actually underselling the value of the premium experience for kettles in the process, as has been discussed here. This ORD based 1K will shortly begin to shift 10-20% of business towards VX/B6/DL/AA/HI and only strategically assign businesss to UA. UA is making 2 miscalculations: (1) Once 1K requalification is earned (for me by 5/31), any over and above premium business is more wisely assigned to non-UA carrier; (2) UA is leaving $ on the table when upgrading kettles.

Boiler84

Fair point. Agree . . . to some extent. And some airlines do notify some FFs of some FF program changes.

People will debate what constitutes a “policy change,” especially general (non FF program) policy changes.

I remember when F fares were always significantly higher than coach fares. Then airlines started offering some discounted F fares. Policy change that they should notify flyers about? Probably not. Cheaper F fares started showing up, and people bought them.

Then the discounts grew larger. Again, probably not a policy change.

Then airlines started offering buy-ups to F. Policy change? Debatable. BTW, I first bought an F buy-up at a gate around 1989, on Delta. Something like $49 for a 3 hour flight.

Quite a time gap between then and mid-2010’s when airlines started offering upgrades at check-in at kiosks. But not much – if any – of a policy change.

So now some offer them at the gate again – announcing the option to people. Policy change? Some may think so. The airlines could just as easily claim “we’ve told all the analysts that we’re increasing the focus on monetizing first class. This is just an extension of that - we're doing exactly what we announced we were going to do.”

Boiler84

Do you ever fly international? Comp upgrades are virtually non-existent on non-US carriers. Some non-US carriers grant lounge access to elites, but for US-based people international lounge access comes with *G. That is not a terribly high bar to achieve. I don't think any of the US carriers grant domestic lounge access to elites.

It's possible that UA, DL and AA are all miscalculating the impacts of their moves to further monetize F. It's also possible that individuals are miscalculating the impact that moving to another airline has on the airline they are leaving. I think the later is more likely than the former.

If you really believe the grass is greener on VX/B6/DL/AA/HI, why even waste time requalifying for 1K?

AirbusFan2B

I book a mix of Y and F. Perhaps something UA doesn't realize. For my Y business, I will gladly give it to UA as 1K benefits are tangible in Y, and ORD route map is superior. For all of my premium business, since never scoring an UG thanks to gate agents barking out cheap upgrades to kettles and others at DEN and elsewhere (and all the other tactics involved in monetizing F), I will give my F and J business to other carriers because their product and experience are superior to that of UA. I think UA knows its F product is the lowest value among domestic or global competition yet UA is happy to deny its 1Ks UGs. F experience on non-UA is worth a price premium over UA, and therein lies UA's miscalculation. Kettles with flush $ flying once a year enamored by cheap F offer because UA leaving $ on the table. 1K being denied UG every single time: Bye-bye UA for those F fares says this 1K. UA can train its customers to whatever behavior it wishes to enable and also must live with the consequences. UA financials and operations keep lagging competition...

cova

Yes, and UA sells F seats at time of ticket purchase. In fact UA tells you how much more it is to buy up to F when you purchase.

But when a non-elite passenger decides that they don't want to pay for F at time of ticket purchase, then that means they decided to ride in coach.

The issue here is that UA then later offers that non-elite a cheap upgrade to F either when they check in or in the case of DEN at the gate. That is the issue.

UA would rather get a few extra dollars from a passenger that made a decision to fly coach, and now gets a cheap offer to fly in F. That undermines the upgrade program.

If UA wants to sell F for what ever that can get - then simply no longer offer comp upgrades "based on availability". Offer only paid upgrades and when they don't get bites, then keep reducing the upgrade at the gate until someone takes it and then prioritize it based on your status. Say charge $9 for it rather give it to a 1K that spends $12K on UA.

AA already charges everyone for upgrades except the top levels of CK, EXP, and now Plat Pro - except for flights less than 500 miles.

Maybe set up an APP that for a given flight - you look up your reservation and bid on the upgrade.

Just eliminate Comp upgrades all together and then compete with the likes of AA and DL.

AirbusFan2B

Exactly right. The honest announcement from the DEN GA agent would have been: Ladies and gentlemen, listen up - we're selling cheap upgrades. United is happy to announce that it has confirmed a complimentary upgrade to SNA for the lone GS flier on this flight as well as one of the 1K passengers that paid $1,000 for his last minute ticket purchase. Since a system glitch must have occurred causing 3 upgrades to still be available, rather than offering those to overentitled 1Ks, United is making 3 FC seats available for the low price of $129 regardless of status. Any takers?

This is the END of the CPU/RPU program! Smisek era is alive and well.

halls120

Why not just be up front with customers and tell them that instruments will only be cleared once sales have failed to fill the seats, and that CPUs will only happen when no one is buying and there are no instrument-supported upgrades in the queue?

sinoflyer

The delusion of some self-anointed "HVF"s stems from their failure to comprehend that, every minute and every day, hundreds upon thousands of flights are flown without them. And among the so-called 95%, the "kettles" who are condescendingly assumed to be less important than they, there are many once-a-year travelers whose average tickets cost equally if not more than the "elite's."

The fact remains that the few forlorn "elites" who vow never to return to the CPU altar are (have already been) easily replaced by even a small percentage of "kettles" who take up the airlines' TOD offers.

AirbusFan2B

The upgrade/upfare preference bestowed on people of means flying UA once or twice a year (AKA kettles - UA calls them HVFs) is confounding, no? A kettle focused airline UA has become because those are practically the only ones sitting in F anymore. As far as P/Z/A fares, which is the only way for elites to sit in F anymore (unlike kettles), my business is going to carriers with a higher value product. DEN upgrade barker makes this the only logical choice. Many of you here have said, 'if you want to sit in first, pay for first' (unless you're a kettle, I might add, as we can all agree that the $39+ TODs are not really paying for sitting in first.) I will sit in first on UA's competition, then, as I completely understand 1K status doesn't so entitle me.

CCIE_Flyer

I see a lot of talk in this and similar threads about UA luring kettles with cheap upgrade offers, which apparently really is a thing (odd that as an elite, I don't recall ever having been offered a domestic upgrade at checkin - or perhaps not odd, as in theory I guess that should be surrendered by UA free of charge).

The cold hard truth, though, is that there are elites out there - not just kettles - who are snapping up cheap P fares and not wasting a single thought on the CPU program (which I've loathed from its inception). I rarely fly UA in Y, and it's literally been years since I was CPUed into F - I just book my itineraries at the minimum level of service I'm willing to accept and forget about the extra $$ I'm forking over.

Now having said all that, I'm still not crazy about the existing system. Probably my biggest complaint is that these cheap P fares are apparently being pushed by UA to mothers with lap babies. It's to the point where I basically think of UA F as "Lap Baby Class," and I've come pretty close a couple of times to asking to switch with someone in Y just to get away from mothers who are completely immune to their child's blood-curdling cries and endless fussing.

In an ideal world from my perspective, UA F would return to actually being a premium product with good wine and decent dining options - along with friendly FAs happy to be working the section they find themselves in - and the price would necessarily reflect that. I would fly it less often as a result, but I would enjoy it oh so much more when I did (like back in the heyday when I was routinely presented with a bottle of good wine wrapped in linen at the end of a flight)...

halls120

Back in 2002, MsHalls120 and I flew F IAD-LAX-OGG and back. It was her first time in F, and when the purser heard her mention it to another FA, he brought her a full bottle of good wine to take home as a souvenir. The good old days, indeed.

mduell

Easy to see how incredibly appealing the cheap P are for anyone with a lapchild.

This is the sort of demand you can see how UA reaches with the cheap P compared to the old days where discount F was 4x discount Y where it'd be cheaper for them to buy multiple coach seats.

Often1

+1 - Most of those self-annointed HVC's -- realize that there are exceptions -- are not UA customers, they are UA passengers. The customer is the CFO or other company official who controls the spend and negotiates the UA contract. The self-annointed person simply sits in a seat.

The HVC's are the people who control $Million's, not $30-40K. OR, they are the people who fly 1-2x / year and pay for a full-fare ticket because it's flexible.