Did you match from UA Platinum or UA 1K? Not sure if I'm reading your previous post correctly.

I have been reading up on the Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan over the last few days, for obvious reasons. One thing that I learned over on the Alaska board in FT is that they "enhanced" their status matching program effective October 1.

Before this month, you got six to twelve months of elite status (rank depended on what you matched from).

Now, you get three months of status, and have to fly 5 - 20k on their metal to retain the status for the year, or coming year if you "match" after July. That sounds more like a status challenge than a match to me.

I wonder if the October 1 change from match to challenge was just a coincidence? It will certainly save Alaska a lot if there is a wave of refugees coming across the border from Mileage Plus.

I didn't ask for the match - it was offered unprompted. That said, I took the match as a 1K this year and expecting to be a 1K again next year. I took the match because I little harm in doing so. I also had expected to push for 1k again next year. But this change made it easy to go all in for AA. I recognize I'm not at the same level at 1K but at least I'm starting with some type of elite status on AA.

First off how much you spend means ZERO except on United. You said you were not in the US, so you have to have other options to fly. You don't say where you are from either, so I will assume FRA-ORD is one of your routes....this same exercise will apply to any route that some other *A flies as well as UA

Scenario #1 - you spend $1300 on UA and fly FRA-ORD-FRA - you earn 1300 PQP

Scenario #2 - you book LH on 220 ticket stock from Lufthansa.com - for the same $1300 - FRA-ORD-FRA is 8688 miles RT
I made a mock booking for 3 weeks from now and it came out at $1229 and it was fare class Q - that earns 75% RDM
So, this trip with you paid $1229 for on LH.com gives you
8688 x 75% = 6516 RDM (United FF Miles)
6516 RDM /5 = 1303 PQP

Scenario #3 you book FRA-SFO-FRA using LH and SAS for $1429 in premium Economy - fare code P and A
FRA-CPH-SFO-CPH-FRA RT is 11818 miles
11818 miles x 100% = 11818 RDM (United FF miles)
11818 /6 (SAS isn't a preferred partner) = 1970 PQP

1970 PQP x12 = 23636 PQP
also, you will have 48 PQF

So, you may have to "Think out of the box" a bit and I have no idea of your actual travel habits, but those are realistic prices I pulled from websites for 2-3 weeks out

1K isn't nearly that far off....


TL:DR - Don't fly United to earn 1K, except the 4 flights you are required to fly - ESPECIALLY if you can find long haul cheap PE or Business fares and especially on preferred partners. UA is making it difficult to even fly them for long hauls except deep discount economy or basic economy

Yeah, of course. If I happen to join the OZ program, I doubt I'd ever set foot on OZ metal. I'd only do it for *G benefits and nothing more.

Same here. I went from someone who stretched to get Silver, and when they devalued Silver, I started targeting Gold. I did have to stretch a bit to get Gold in all years but one, but literally almost ALL of my flying went to UA, a lot of times without even checking competing airlines' prices, and even if I did check, I'd pay a premium to fly UA anyway.

Something tells me that the spreadsheets that they used to try to calculate PRASM didn't take this type of activity into account, but if that's correct, we'll see it in 2020's and 2021's numbers. I'll certainly try to listen to the earnings calls when they announce PRASM for the next two years because it will definitely be interesting. I'm certainly not the only person who will no longer pay a premium to fly UA.

1K only really helps if you fly UA though.


This is the classic Catch-22 scenario:

1) The easiest way to achieve United 1K status is by not flying United.
2) By not flying United you can't take advantage of the United 1K status benefits.

:confused:

LH and ANA upgrades are much easier than UA upgrades IME

My RPU go unused cause I mainly fly first, but I use every GPU every year pretty much - next year I get extra free GPU due to points - can't wait....
also *G benefits when flying other airlines - lounge access
There really aren't many 1K benefits on UA except pre boarding and you get that on LH and CPU which are few and far between and not on long haul

That's a good point. ^

I'm surprised so many people say they're leaving UA instantly instead of planning a status match next year and strategic movement to some other airline.

In most cases, people would have already (re)qualified this year or be very close to doing so under the old rules (of course), often with plans clearly in place to (re)earn 1K or whatever for next year (benefits through January 2021). It's rarely advantageous to do a status match/challenge (assuming it's available) at the very end of a calendar year versus deciding to time it optimally during the following year. OTOH, if someone is concerned that other airlines won't be doing status matches/challenges from UA next year or won't do them on such advantageous terms as a result of UA's FF program changes, that could be an argument for moving now. Even so, I would think that in many cases it would be wise to wait to see how other airlines react to the UA changes before formulating a strategy about what moves to make next, for future years.

I am among the strategic planning subset of FTers, and am calculating the optimal timing for a status match with Alaska Airlines. I discovered that they significantly downgraded their status matching program on October 1. Coincidence???

Airline FFPs are no longer worth it. Become a free agent. You'll be glad you did!

It could be in response to the GPU/RPU changes but that's not a feature of the AS program and wouldn't be very relevant as AS doesn't operate longhaul international flights or have close enough partners that do to enable AS customers to get upgrades on those flights.

I suspect that UA kept the planned changes to status qualification rules highly secret until they were announced. IANAL but telling AS so that they could change their status match program would probably be considered collusion, just like discussing price hikes in advance would be.

TK is the only *A program I am aware of that even does status matches, and it's much more difficult to maintain *G with them than it is with OZ, so I don't see a point in doing a status match anywhere. I mean, I could do a status match at WN, and get A-list status with just 3 R/T flights in a few months. But honestly, unless maintaining status with the new airline is much easier than it was with UA, why would I even bother? Just to get suckered into another FFP hole instead of enjoying my time as a free agent?

So YES to this.

30 year FF on UA/AA and lifetime on AA. In the past 2 years, I've flown UA/AA about 5 times, and JetBlue about 20, Norwegian, Ryanair and several others.

At this point, its all about the cheapest seat I can get in the front of the plane. Currently sitting on a TAP A330 Neo in C... it cost 10% of what the same product from UA cost.... literally 10% and its incredibly nice.

You're right about the collusion. I expect that AS got lucky with their rule change timing. But it probably didn't take a genius among their loyalty program managers to guess that at least one of the "Big Three" programs would have a major devaluation planned for the coming year, and that this would trigger an uptick in status match requests. Since the devaluation would likely be announced in the last quarter of 2019, it made sense to institute the AS status match change on Oct. 1. Well played, AS!