bocastephen

Not sure where you are getting your numbers aside from just pie in the sky guessing. The devaluation amount is a total unknown. A flight that goes for 12k r/t today could be 95k r/t after the change using Delta as an example. No one, GS or otherwise, is going to be happy coughing up 5-10x the miles for an award ticket. This change might make YOU happy because you assume everyone except your fellow GS members will leave and you'll have empty F cabins to upgrade into?

dilanesp

I doubt this. Limited saver availabity already means that most of the seats affected by this will be seats that are already set at standard award levels. So no 12k seats.

This is really about (1) increasing the cost of STANDARD awards in peak times and on peak routes, and (2) making it extremely difficult to fly transoceanic J for free.

Kacee

1. Everyday awards are already dynamic. This change is about effectively eliminating the fixed price saver award.
2. The miles I earn are through UA spend are not "free." Many of us expressly take their value into account in determining to direct our spend to UA.

dilanesp

To UA, you are flying "free"'- or, alternatively, being comped into a seat that has a market value of thousands of dollars.

You can still redeem your miles under the new system So your spending will still be recognized. You just won't be able to access UA's most valuable product as often. You will have a choice between accessing it less often or using your miles for other rewards such as domestic flights or partner J. And as a business matter for UA, that makes sense. Awards in transoceanic J were significantly underpriced.

Kacee

lol this is hilarious. Did you lift it from a UA script?

Actually, I will simply buy J on other carriers which have a superior product. And use my transferable currencies to book awards in programs that still provide value.

dilanesp

They won't for long. Everyone is devaluing their RDM's.

And honestly the airlines WANT you to pay cash for transoceanic J. That's the entire point! The most valuable real estate on the airplane was being given to FF'ers when it could have sold for thousands of dollars.

FF'ers were exploiting an inefficiency in the system by redeeming miles at very generous rates to snag international J seats that were incredibly valuable. Airlines are now deciding, one by one, that with flights going out full and transoceanic J such an important profit center, that we aren't going to get to do that anymore.

This was inevitable, and you will see your other options for doing this close off over time.

RustyC

This is the classic "bad news wrapped in good news" that Continental used to be famous for. I'd put this one at 90% bad, 10% good, based on experience already with Delta.

The close-in fee removal reminds me of when Continental upgraded meals on trans-Atlantic service as a "good news" amid bad news. I immediately predicted - correctly - that that change would get swept away as soon as the airline hit a bump with the economy or other hard times. I think this one will reappear, too, next time the go looking for more revenue to please Wall Street. But the opacity on the award chart and higher mileage costs to redeem they want to be permanent.

I can't speak to the situation with upgrade awards (have burned some 2.9 million but almost none on premium cabins), but if you look at Delta with the no-chart pricing you'll see the increases for Y awards far outweigh the decreases. A low-load non-stop short-haul like ATL-MCI-ATL will be lower, but a trip like ATL-SCL-ATL will be significantly higher at about any time of the year, even with the flight having empty seats a fair amount of the time. Asia awards are hard to find under 100K.

Some of us already took a lot of our trips in the spring or fall slow seasons and know full well where the least busy periods are, but pricing for these is still quite a bit higher in most cases. There will always be something for the airline to point to like the ATL-MCI-ATL, but overall I think the direction will be unmistakable. And because there's opacity (something that's almost always the enemy of consumers), it'll be hard to put a value on the miles but it'll be significantly less. All those Baby Boomers who ran up miles in high-travel jobs and expected to spend them in retirement better hurry, or your "life savings" might buy only 3-4 trips.

Would agree with the poster upthread that it's the end of an era (sorry, millennials, another thing being left to you in used-up form) and that it'll mean that loyalty no longer makes sense for most of us. I've been operating that way since 2016 and have less than 100K in DL, UA or AA left (out of 3M+ lifetime earned), but with moves like this I'd cut up the mileage cards if I still had them. My last Asia trip was a $530 LAX-BKK-LAX on Xiamen bought with credit card points. The downside was earning zero miles on anyone, but I guess it's not as much of a downside soon.

Or we'll hit a recession, or have another terror attack hopefully not like 9/11, or another SARS (all of which I lived through as an FF) and the airlines will have a much-depleted loyalty base to help them out. Remember after 9/11 and the 10K award sales?

It's not always blue skies for the industry, though they've been on an unusually long run just as the economic expansion has so far been unusually long. That won't go on forever.

The airlines' real strategy is to behave like a cartel now that they're down to three, and to bet on the government bailing them out again if there's a real black swan event. They've become like the big 3 automakers and big 3 broadcast networks back in the 70s, when both those oligopolies made a lot of bad product and didn't really care. Eventually they were chastened by competition seeping in, but because of the high barriers to entry the process took decades.

Looks like I'll have to burn my 150K or so remaining miles between DL/UA/AA faster than I'd wanted, but I'm most thankful I burned the 2.9M or so before them when I did.

747FC

And, there will no longer be waitlisting for I awards.

notquiteaff

CApreppie

So I don't feel compelled to try to make minimum PQM/PQD or credit card spend every year. Just fly United when I want to.

WineCountryUA

While understanding why you might speculate that, we don't know this for a fact -- yet.

Repooc17

but lifetime status is based on BIS miles accumulation of UA/UX operated flights; PQM (bonus)/PQD/credit card spend do not factor into lifetime status calculations.

In theory, you can gain MM status without ever attaining elite status along the way - e.g. earn as many UA/UX BIS while spending less than $3K PQD annually.

747FC

Right you are--pure speculation on my part. But, I would like to hear a counter-argument on how there could be waitlistable Saver Awards with the program as being announced.

WineCountryUA

Not sure the phrase "counter-argument" is the right phrase here.
First, we don't have the full details of UA plan / implementation-- we can speculate, we can use the DL as a model, .... but that's only speculation (maybe informed speculation, but speculation).
Second, if UA plans to continue waitlisting, they could create a process -- much would depend on how the basic plan is structured. Is there the concept of inventory? Will there be caps? or is this a simple X cpm conversion?

A potential implementation for one case -- domestic leg on an international award, could be the waitlist clears for no additional miles if a certain inventory situation exists.

But the real point, to make such a definitive statement before UA releases further information is hasty,

SFOdelayed