drklain

Thanks. Will update this list come January...

LIH

You have really similar numbers to my first year of qualification. A little light on the PQD trend but by a rounding error of a few thousand. I would take the over on your qualification. Happy to make a market there for other FT members looking for a gambling diversion!

drklain

Gambling on a GS invite? Heck I consider GPU clearance a gamble every time I try to use one! With almost all my travel being international and the fact first class is gone and most of my travel is in business(first), I don't even know what I'm supposed to do with the darn things. I know that if i make GS, I could use them to get an award ticket in economy and boost them up to biz, but as a 1K they are effectively worth as much to me as an RPU. The real fun is that my projected PQM this year means I'll start next year with 16 GPUs (or however many points that will convert to)....United has really devalued things to a point where the benefits/distinction between Platinum and 1K are pretty much gone. I miss the old days when (as a 1K) I could buy a ticket, apply a GPU and pretty much be guaranteed to clear and most of the times would clear within a day or two of ticket purchase. That's the fun of being a 1K for 11 straight years and never making GS. Always a bridesmaid...hopefully this January I'll be an excited new GS while all you jaded, multi-year GSs look on me and smile to yourselves. :-)

LIH

Being able to force GPUs as a GS at 72 hours out is (almost) a return to the days of GPUs being money-good. Hang in there.

drklain

No question. I think GS will reinvigorate me and make the GPUs far more valuable to me. Staying positive and fingers crossed!

villox

Since becoming GS 3 years ago, I have cleared every single earned GPU into Polaris. Averaging 12-14 GPUs per year. That's a mix of either upgrading a paid economy ticket into confirmable PN space at booking, upgraded economy awards for me + a companion into confirmable space (or waitlisting and having it clear well in advance), or forcing a companion when I'm on a paid ticket. The latter two are my most common. I never play the upgrade lottery.

spartacusmcfly

If that's what you miss, PlusPoints should scratch your nostalgic itch. You say you fly in J for business so the GPUs are mainly for leisure. Earning 16 GPU (+2 converted from domestic GPUs = 18 GPU/yr) put you in elite company. You can likely use the skip waitlist feature to confirm GPUs at time-of-booking for leisure travel. See..back to your 1K glory days -- no GS required!

drklain

I'll give them up for GS...

AugustusM

Not always on the $50K in one year part, trust me on that one.

drklain

No question about that, however it is also true that $50K seems to be a general tipping point and it is true that if you deposit $50K in the United Passplus (or whatever they call it now) program, you get automatic Global Service membership. I've been following the GS trends over the last few years and clearly there is also a "where do you live/what's your base?" factor that also matters. New York and SFO seem to have so many uber frequent flyers/high cost people that they have to use an even higher dollar value to keep the number of GS down to what United deems "reasonable". Those who live in a non-base area or overseas seem to have the lowest dollar value to qualify (both of which make sense.

What's unclear is how that line gets drawn. We've known for years (or at least as we can ever "know" how the machine works) that this is tied to revenue United gets and a top percentage of all flyers by revenue. However, that clearly isn't the only calculation. If it was, it would be likely that SFO and NYC would have somewhere around 40-50% of all Global Service members and would be completely overwhelmed, so the calculation is done some other way. My completely unsupported hypothesis is that it works something like this:

- United Determines roughly how many Global Service Members they want to have/invite (for argument's sake, let's say that is 1000).
- United subtracts the "guaranteed Global Service members" (corporate invites, passplus, 4MM members, etc.). again, for argument's sake let's say that is 50 invites, leaving 950 invites.
- United identifies the top 950 flyers by spend and conducts a deeper analysis (i.e., where are they based?).
- United has already determined how many GS they can accommodate at a given airport/base due to capacity. For argument's sake, let's say that it is 150 for each of the United Hubs (NYC, SFO, LAX, IAD, IAH, ORD, SEA). At other airports they can't accommodate as many, but they don't have as many high revenue flyers from those places, so it's a non-issue.
- United starts assigning invites -- starting with the #1 revenue person and working their way down. When a base is at capacity, they stop inviting people for that base. Given capacity issues and the other 50 guaranteed invites, this means that they go well below the top 950 people...probably down to somewhere around #2000 (again I'm just making up numbers here).
- Next they do a QA check to see who was ranked above the lowest person who has an invite and did NOT get an invite. Special consideration is granted to current (and possibly former) Global Services members. Some sort of reapportionment takes place but they also don't want to blow up NYC and SFO, so the end result is that people with lower PQD numbers at other locations get invites while people with higher PQD numbers do not at the more crowded bases.
- Invites get sent out.

Again, I have NO proof that this is how it works, but I think it is a pretty realistic assumption as to how the process takes place. What we don't know is the numbers (how many total, base limits, any other circumstances that change the calculus (for example, does being a million miler matter?)). My personal interpretation is that, if you are based in NYC or SFO, you need to go with much higher dollar numbers, if you live in Boise Idaho, you're likely to get the nod with a lower dollar number, but everyone in the group is still a pretty high dollar customer for United.

AugustusM

The only thing that was made clear to me the year I did not get GS when I had over $50K in PQM was that they look at a multi-year trend. That was a fact, I'm pretty sure I even posted the denial letter for my challenge. Everything else we do is speculation.

shchang118

I have been a 1K member since 2015. Last year PQD $18K, however this year I currently have $31K PDQ, 150 PQM all on UA metal. Most is international travel but due to my corp policy, I am unable to buy business. I have purchased my own business class fare for personal flights and usually am able to book B fares. Most likely will hit over $45K and have convinced my SFO executives to fly UA as they are able to book business fare classes. Home base IAH....any chance of a GS shot?

katan

That feels like on the edge. Your home base is hyper competitive, and they are booking business class all the time. It seems the 40's are the spectrum of possibility: low 40's bad, high 40's good.

I was on the edge so many years until I could get in more UA international biz, then flipped to the inside since.

LIH

Do you mind if I ask what your previous two years had been when you had that >$50K year?

findark

Much better odds if you can put up a second consecutive year of the 40+ numbers.