Why Not Miles for E+?
 

I'm sure this has been discussed previously and I apologize for a repeat - but I keep wondering why, if UA and other airlines are willing to let people use miles to upgrade to business or first class, why they don't allow people to use miles to sit in E+.

If there is a thread on this, please just post the link - no need to repeat the discussion. Thanks.

Think this would work but a backdoor approach if a Chase credit card holder would be to paid with the credit card and then use credit card miles to create a statement credit.. 100 miles == $1 credit (5,000 mile min).

E+ is priced dynamically, which increases the difficulty. Even allowed, the mile equivalent will be poor in value anyway (1 mile to 1 cent).

Also - E+ is classified as a auxiliary revenue. So it would be better to get cash rather than redemption so that the income statement can look better.

Delta has mileage awards directly into Comfort+ seating. Delta will also show the increment in $ or miles to confirm into Comfort+ seating at time of booking on delta.com.

It would have, essentially, the same impact on the income statement either way. If they let passengers use miles, it would reduce their liability associated with the miles outstanding.

It won't happen because this is a smart idea.

I think they would rather have cash than "reduced liability", which are sort of the accounting equivalent of vouchers.

They already allow the use of miles to pay for wifi (also auxiliary revenue? – but granted, probably makes less money than cash for E+). They could easily tie the cost of the redemption to the cash price of the seat. I imagine the bigger hurdle is dealing with seat changes, equipment swaps, etc. The system handles that for cash purchases, but I can see updating the system to support miles as the currency for all of those scenarios would be non-trivial.

{assume you are referring to the Choice Points idea}

Many uses for miles instead of cash, such as for wifi, UC membership, Shopping Mall, annual chase fee, ..... are all well under 1 cpm. All poor values but for mileage rich folks, not needing all their miles for "better" uses, such as premium cabin international tickets, it is not an unreasonable option.

There is probably also a relatively small market for using miles in this way. Elites, the ones that tend to have a lot of miles, already get E+ for free. And non-elites, who don't fly a lot, probably haven't built up a whole lot of miles. Of course there are exceptions . . .