chrisl137

It's about the RSM. Anecdotally (I'm not going to do stats based on posts to FT) it seems that the 1K ranks are heavily populated by people who either fly a lot of TPAC or TATL+TCON, and many of them book far enough out to get very good prices on either UA or partners (this is FT, after all). I just opened up the UA site and priced SFO-NRT and EWR-NRT, and even the lazy, easy to find prices are ~12cpm and 8.5cpm. Flying twice EWR-NRT at 8.5 cpm will get you silver, and four times will get you gold. Meanwhile a domestic flyer can do 9 trips LAX-BOS (one of the longest domestic flights combined with the two airports that have some of the worst ground access, adding to the trip time) at 20 cpm and still be almost 5K miles short of gold, despite about twice the spend of the 4x EWR-NRT flyer, and more than twice the RSM. But the lower RSM flyer is being rewarded/encouraged more than the higher value domestic flyer. FF programs aren't a reward for flying an airline - they're an incentive to encourage you to fly that airline on your next flight - UA has been rewarding the lower markup flyers and is reworking to program to make it reward what they care about ($$).

I have a colleague who flies LAX-MUC regularly. It costs about the same booked a month out as LAX-IAD does a few days out, but returns more than twice the miles. Which flyer is more valuable to UA, the once a month LAX-MUC advance purchaser or once a month LAX-IAD 3 days out purchaser?

Repooc17

AC doesn't share revenue with UA on its TPAC routes. UA and NH do.

All loyalty programs are marketing in nature. The less folks become emotionally attached to them, the easier to detach when the program revamps.

kb1992

For this weekend, I have been thinking about this, about life in general. Its been a crazy run of 15 years 1K. Looking back, I just realized what a hard life to do 100K miles per year.

I am the kind of customer United wants to fire: $10000-$12000 annual spend. No way I can make 1K under the insane requirements. 54 segments is a non-starter as I need a life. Basically United demands $24000 every year.

As a math professor, I can do some calculations. I travel to Asia 4 times a year on coach fare. The main 1K benefit is to upgrade business class. There are many ways to accomplish that. Lot of $3000-$3600 R/T P fares are available as I am no longer a United captive. Total cost would be $12000-$14400 which is much less than what United wants. Mileage upgrade on United is another option. The Asia routes are flooded with $500-$1000 G/K/L/S fares, upgradable by $1200 co-pay+60K miles R/T. Let's value 60K miles by $1200 (2 cents/mile, already generous). The total cost for each trip is $2900-$3400 which is on par with P fares. Or, we can just redeem miles/points at 140K-160K R/T in business class assuming partner redemption rate remains for now. This means $2800-$3200 at 2 cents/mile, again on par with P fares.

Whoever came up with the number $24000 spend is either insane, or out of mind due to greed.

United has declared a war against international flyers by saying that your dollars are worth less than dollars from domestic flyers, and by setting an absurdly high bar to achieve 1K. Those MBAs working at United HQ must think each GPU is worth thousands of dollars! It is equally peculiar that United seems prefer people fly partner airlines by giving them better PQP in many cases. This does not make any sense.

The writing is on the wall, together with dynamic award pricing and constant devaluation of MP benefits, and now this hugely inflated bar to attain status.

United has not only declared war on international flyers, but also against all frequent flyers. From now on, United deems its relationship with frequent flyers strictly as transactional. Your decade long loyalty means nothing to the regime in Chicago.

Thank you United for making the decision for me so I can experience other airlines (often better than United) in the world, and stop chasing status with you. I just realized it's such great relief which makes my life better.

Meanwhile, this would become a textbook case how a business destroy customer loyalty and pay big price when economy is down. CEO Oscar should share some of the blame if that happens.

STS-134

Do you have a source for this? It seems that the "home airline" does have some sort of financial liability if one of their members flies a partner and uses a lounge (otherwise A3 wouldn't have cracked down on lifetime Gold status so much, even on members who never fly A3 metal), but I have always been unclear on how much money is exchanged and who it comes from.

For example, I take a NH flight in Y from PEK-NRT as a UA*G and use the CA lounge, does UA pay CA? It seems so. But does NH also pay CA, because it is a NH ticket I'm flying? If so, how much?

Meola10

This is pretty great for me. I might be able to earn high status through PQP only since I do tend to spend alot on flights but don’t fly too often or very far.

Repooc17

Only from now on? It's been transactional for a long time. Not just UA, a lot of things in life are transactional. One may not see them as such on the surface, but at the end of the day, we live in a transactional world.

chrisl137

The math says that many international flyers are giving them less profit than many domestic flyers, and that they're rewarding the lower value int'l flyers substantially more than the higher value domestic flyers. Look about 3 posts up.

My colleague who is flying LAX-MUC regularly isn't doing many more trips or spending much more than I was when I was doing a lot of LAX-IAD short notice trips, but he's easily making 1K and I was perpetually 5-10K miles short of Gold. The profit from my flights was higher, but I got fewer FF benefits. I'm probably flying more this year than I was then, and I haven't been on a UA plane since Jan 1. I'll burn some miles for a trip at the holidays this year, but I doubt I'll have any paid flights on UA.

Aussienarelle

I read it on FT (last night I think) as I had never previously been aware of this although it makes sense as lounges cost money.

I would think it is only if your access to the lounge is due to *G so in your example because the access is due to your UA*G CA would charge UA. Your NH flight is irrelevant unless it was your fare class with NH that got you access to the CA lounge and then I believe CA would charge NH and not UA.

I have no idea how much. This was news to me last night. Most of the time I am flying business so receive lounge access as part of the business fare,.but for example with LH I get to use the Senator lounges as I am *G (1K/1MM).

findark

The more I have had time to think about this, the more I feel like it is less of any kind of fundamental paradigm shift, and more like they just decided to raise 1K from a 100,000 mile tier to a 200,000 mile tier (for what seems like the plurality of us who flew around 12c of RSM) and decided to throw a bone to the people at 24+ RSM. People here seem to fall into three camps:

• 100k mile fliers around 12 cpm, for whom 1K is now totally unachievable
• 100k or less fliers who fly at much higher cost (often full fare always), who don't care or are suddenly newly eligible for 1K
• 200k+ mile fliers who similarly don't feel a change

Doubling your flying is a huge ask for most of us marginally-profitable 100k customers, and obviously a few upgrades is not worth either flying twice as much or needlessly burning twice as much cash that could easily just buy the premium cabin outright. It's very disappointing to be in the first group, but it's really just an upping of the ante for where the tiers stand (how would people react is it was just 200k PQM with 24k PQD next year?). It will be interesting to see where DL and AA go (DL DM was already a significant cut above 1K in terms of flying requirements as it needed 125k with fewer multipliers), and it definitely upsets the competitive balance between the programs.

tallasadoor

I cant speak for DL, but it probably gives AA the excuse to raise PQD requirments to something higher than 15k.

The AA IT system is not so good at managing a complicated FF program (upgrades are call in to request, a pain to re-ticket when cleared, list is very mysterious, accrual info is not visible) so it would be a big task to all of a sudden track a more complicated setup like UA. But who knows.

DCEsquire

I couldn't agree with you more. I have spent all weekend trying to understand what UA was thinking here.

The 24k 1k threshold is never going to happen for so many current 1ks and UA has literally thrown it's most loyal customers into the arms of their competitors.

ContinentalFan

I’m afraid not. 😞 United is trying to modify your behavior not theirs.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

If you're a resident of Bay area (and fly a lot domestically on company business) are you going to switch to AA or Delta or whatever? I think quite a few are stuck w/ decision to stick w/ UA or make work travel more troublesome. I'm sorry - better service on Delta isn't going to convince many to add a connection to and from where they're going. Same thing w/ IAH. ORD and EWR might see more switches because of area hubs for OALs.

Kacee

I will add a fourth camp. People who fly a mix of international and domestic at a level which makes $18k achievable but who don't come close to 54 segments. There's an additional subgroup (which includes me) who could direct spend away from foreign carriers to hit $24k but would be trading down on product quality and schedule convenience and just don't feel 1K is worth it, particularly in light of recent MP devaluations and the feeling they've been deliberately targeted by UA for exclusion (much like the current tax structure targeting blue state professionals for higher taxes).

I don't think I agree with you that this is not a paradigm shift. Saying that miles flown will no longer get you status is a major shift and it will end my nine year 1K run.
DL is difficult from SFO, but a mix of carriers including AS, B6, and various foreign carriers will work just fine. As an added bonus, several outstanding foreign options (including CX, SQ, JL, EK) credit to AS, which makes top tier status easily achievable.

Aussienarelle

Or they think 1K members will be happy with Platinum now that Platinum can use PlusPoints. I would not be happy with this plan but there may be some former 1K members who only made Platinum this year after the increase spend to $15k who are happy to get some PlusPoints.

Perhaps United thinks everyone will be happy to drop a tier and strive for that new tier. It is called static forecasting (it is what politicians do with taxes) versus dynamic forecasting. I will.not be happy to drop a tier but Platinum on United may be better than the alternative on OALs. I actually do fly OALs and pay for the PE/business/first seat if I think the benefit vs cost is there.

United looked around and thought where are you former 1K/Platinum members going to go and get the benefits we provide? Not saying it was necessarily well thought out for the bargain hunting 100k mile flyer who is going to take their money and find something that suits them.

There were always complaints on FT of 1K members not being able to use their "benefits" so thinning the herd was the only way United could ensure the benefits go to their most valuable flyers. United does care about loyal frequent flyers it is just the 1K members like me who made PQM of 155k on PQD of $15k is not who United wants to reward. It is a business (FWIW I used 8 out of my 9 GPUs this year so I liked the old program).