I became liberated from chasing UA status a few years ago when they introduced PQDs. It pretty much made it too expensive for me to aim for 1K status (very little OPM travel for me). Fortunately it coincided with reaching 1MM status, so I had that safety net.

A lot of my travel since then has been on AS due to relocation from SFO to the Pacific Northwest, but I ultimately consider myself a free agent since the status benefits on AS are somewhat limited for international travel.

This UA change will not change anything for me. But it would certainly would drive me towards free agentdom if I wasn’t already there. The cost of loyalty with any airline is just not worth the benefits anymore.

I'm plat on UA. Status matched to DL recently and should meet their challenge for plat so will have DL/UA plat through Jan 2021. Going forward, I'm gonna dump my MP Explorer card and sign up for CSR. I'm also gonna fly whatever airlines works best for my schedule. I've already planned trips with AA and WN. As far as status, I'll just see where things land. I'm actually excited to be "free."

I totally agree and bet many others believe this also

I may stay with UA because I do enough travel where lifetime MM isn’t that far off (e.g. probably within a decade). But I don’t know how degraded the benefits of lifetime Gold will be at that point. That being said, I will have zero incentive to fly every last leg on UA. I know I’m not making 1K anytime soon again, and even Platinum becomes a stretch now that the PP CC has been trashed in the new scheme. That said, I am not someone who will spend my own money to fly up front in F/J every time, so having status that can help in IRROPS is meaningful.

Oh well. This just sucks. And I have no doubt AA will copy the move; DL is in a position of strength where they may not need to do so - and they would probably see some benefit.

What benefits are you trying to get out of a new FFP? If memory serves you usually clear 6+ GPU on UA.. you will not be able to come even close to that kind of value with any non-US FFP.

My strategy in 2020: Travel less
My strategy in 2021: TOD more

Will likely stick with UA, though, since I'm a lifetime UC member and don't need to worry about that, and as a 1MM'er can get E+ at booking.

Internationally, I'm looking forward to buying decently-priced J on better airlines.

I'm generally heavy on PQD but a little light on PQM, so this is good from that perspective, but since I've moved so much shorthaul domestic away from UA I'm light on PQS and not quite heavy enough on PQD to avoid the PQS requirement.

Will probably end up in about the same spot, alternating between gold and plat, with more incentive to upgrade or buy up than in the past.

ffindark you are right the 1K upgrades have been great. I think in 2019 I only purchased one Polaris fare and that was a P fare less than the R fare, and have had 7 Polaris upgrades so far this year, 1 PP upgrade (waiting for the Polaris upgrade on that flight) and waiting for 1 more - it has been a good ride with UA and will make the most of my PlusPoints for 2020. I typically book W or R fares on UA and I will not get close to $18k in a spend only made $15k in spend this year by taking a PQD trip to make the spend. It is my money not OPM, so I am selective on the flights I book.

I have the AMEX Centurion card for the reasons outlined in post by halls120 Also, I have found LH to be great when I sly them as *G, so perhaps the strategy I will employ will be to fly TK/LH/LX/OS to Europe and bid on upgrades as suggested by halls120 or fly PE if the flights have the product (LH/NZ)

I actually was searching for flights to SYD last night and realized (via Google flights) that I can fly Hawaiian via HNL which I had never thought to do before.

It is actually quite liberating not to be tied into 016 tickets.

For my domestic flights WN has always been good value to me and I had been mixing it up between UA and WN but as a general rule WN is cheaper.

Bottom line: I think TravellingMan is right. I will become a free agent (well after I use my PlusPoints in 2020 :D)

Great insights from everybody and interesting perspectives from different folks.

Free agency.

Jeez this is a tough one. I'll hit 100,000 LT miles with UA by end of calendar year, having flown nearly exclusively UA this year. I was really looking forward to hitting 1MM flown with them. However, with UA now penalizing us for flying with them by forcing PQD down our throats I'm not so sure. I'm internationally based, and have the luxury of selecting any number of airlines (UA being merely one of them). Whilst UA is often the cheapest in terms of fares, the reason I choose them is mainly for the Premier benefits I can use on the flights such as extra baggage allowance. Checking my MP dashboard thus far I've got $1,059 in PQD which per the new system wouldn't even make my a Silver never mind the fact I flew 44,000 PQM across 15 segments of revenue travel.




As others have pointed out, now may be a time for me to go free agent and just choose whatever fares are the cheapest and get me the most status. Living in SYD starting next year and having to do a number of inter-continental trips, it's time for the airlines to make the case for me to spend money with them rather than me being blindly loyal to one! Thus far I'm looking at AS, OZ and A3 but would love to hear folks thoughts on which status is the easiest to get to and offers the best benefits. I'm inclined to stick with * if possible but am open to new possibilities.


Safe Travels,

James

Over the last number of years, I've generally flown between 40-70k miles on UA and my typical spend is around 4k, so prior to the addition of PQD, I was usually Gold and except for the first year of the MP changes when I stayed Gold, have since been a high value Silver. Not sure if I will bother chasing status anymore. Probably better to just rely on my Chase card for priority boarding and then maybe get an E+ subscription. It's not like I ever got upgraded as a silver. For some of my domestic flights, I do sometimes pay for F is there is a cheaper fare available. I have about 300k FF miles, so maybe just time to burn them!

I'll just go for the cheapest now, and qualify for *G via Asiana.

Wooo Hooo.
I’m a free agent now! lol
I will buy the cheapest ticket. To make up for the lost lounge access, I will probably apply for an AMEX Platinum.

Too bad I won’t requalify for 1K
They just added spend requirements for an overseas resident.

For the price of 1K, I might as well buy full P discount business class tickets when I need them.

The upgrades so far have been useless.
I still have 4 GPUs in my account.

I will probably credit my spend to AC from now on just so I can get *G.
(It’s only $6kCAD spend for *G)

Your location says Canada - I've never really considered that "overseas"

Switched to AA this year because of a change in flying pattern and also because the writing was on the wall with UA. Happy to have done so. Sad day for MP, though. It used to be a great program.

For people who travel mostly within the Americas, these changes are particularly brutal.