delpiero223

Since UA has now clarified that only UA/UX flights cound for the "Fly to the Finish" promo, it's basically useless for Premier members from outside of North America.

Positively thinking, United should know about this and might include us Europeans into mentioned "challenge to international premier members". But I guess that I'm done with UA and the Star Alliance for now.

kampret

You can fly to Europe with United metal too right? Why is it useless? Genuine question.

delpiero223

Europeans are not allowed to enter or even transit the US when coming from Schengen/Ireland/UK. Since Biden doesn't appear to lift the travel ban soon, there's no way to fly United as a European citizen. Only way would be flying to Mexico / Romania / Turkey for 15 days and continue to the US afterwards.

The promo might work out for e.g. South Americans. But not for most Europeans, Australians (can't leave the country) and probably not for Asians, too.

fivesixseven

Same for me.

garykung

Same here, but I am in an even worse situation.

I am about 62k BIS mile short of being 1MM. So until I can get that 62k BIS, I am still stuck with UA. I may be the first ever 1MM who will earn the MM status while being no status.

spartacusmcfly

I could see the US open to nationals from the EU, UK, Singapore, and a few other countries in Sept. That'll still give you 2+ months to hit the promotion targets. The single shot vaccination rate in those regions is impressive, and will force the hand of US health officials. 1st shot rates:

SIN - 78%
UK - 70%
​​​​​EU - 61%
US - 58%

Tommys888

Anybody has ideas now about how UA would deal with non-US accounts since these promotions are for UA flights only?

When I saw these promotions yesterday I got excited - thought I can just take some intra-Germany flights routing via FRA or MUC but apparently nothing to be excited about since these promotions are for UA only...

SPN Lifer

GUM - 80%

Let us hope the UA hub there is able to get more flights going, and reopen the United Club.

cesco.g

FWIW, UA just cancelled SFO-SIN flights for second half of October, dwindling that option.

uastarflyer

Well that gives more time to slot in real Polaris (and PP) on that route

MileTrek

This guy did it in 2018: https://thepointsguy.com/news/united...ght-non-elite/

mfirst

my sense is that UA is recognizing that an entire reboot of the program is probably going to happen.
In looking at the stock market (take Apple for example) many multi-national companies appear to be doing quite well without spending millions on international travel - the chaos of COVID will probably continue for years and be quite variable - especially outside of major markets.....Businesses will be extremely risk adverse in this area.
In addition, non-essential international travel - like much of what I did for work and how I got status - will probably be extremely slow to recover with domestic travel for business probably be more out of real necessity especially due to the success of virtual meetings.

Loyalty is in chaos (look at AA and Spirit right now) and airlines, like UA are probably doing whatever they can to lay some foundation for future loyalty - heck, some of this is probably cheaper than advertising and if you look at it - they are probably doing a great job at focusing their efforts at their target audience...specifically more 'rewards' for more spent... brilliant!

And probably the best of all of this - the question that I doubt anyone really knows is what are the real costs to UA for status.... sure, giving a perk to people who never use it probably doesnt cost that much, if all those people who "had" status but lost it are going to start traveling again, then their is the opportunity to get it, and they are able to also able to potentially increase the ranks of their program. My question with this is, for example, a Silver, Gold, Plat, 1K, GS, and no status flyer all buy the same ticket and all at the same price for a flight - what is the real cost (profit vs loss) to UA in terms of $/mi flown. I bet there are a lot of international routes (or seats) that were loss leaders, regardless of how many F-seats were sold and at what price, that airlines - like UA are happy they are not flying daily. PP's are probably getting handed out like candy (20 at a time) and I wonder what percent actually get used and what the opportunity costs are....probably very very very low.

in other words, this is all a game and everyone wants to win - and we can - but we dont know all of the rules or what the value of the prize is.

ExplorerWannabe

At this stage, it seems to me foreign-based elites have been a very very small portion of United's elite customer base and a large number of them are unlikely to be doing much flying on United over the next year. The logical implications of that (at the gross level) are 1) extending status to foreign-based elites will have a very small impact on US-based elites or their chances for upgrades and 2) extending status for foreign-based elites is unlikely to do much for them until their travel on United is able to resume. What's probably more important is having a plan that allows them to pick back up where they left off when their countries open up again. If their countries are open to travel to/from the US then they go back to the camp of US-based elites, many of whom are no longer traveling on (or have signficantly reduced their travel on) OPM.
It doesn't look to me like we're getting back to 2019 levels of travel any time soon -- it seems to me that UA and every other travel-based company is having to make major changes in their near- and mid-term strategies and placating a small minority of elites is probably not biggest problem in their job jar at the moment.

dilanesp

Absolutely. Most international routes are not part of any sort of Open Skies agreement, which means that they work similarly to the way domestic flying worked in the days of the CAB. The airline applies to the relevant governments for the route, and gets a certain, limited number of flights.

Under that system, the right to fly a particular route or to a particular destination is itself valuable, because if traffic increases 5 or 10 years from now, you have it and your competitors may not (or may have it only to a limited extent). So it can make perfect business sense for UA to fly the route at a loss even for a substantial period of time.

jsloan

I'm not sure how true that first part is; the US has open-skies agreements with 130 countries: https://www.state.gov/open-skies-partners/

There are, admittedly, some countries without Open Skies agreements where UA is definitely trying to keep a beachhead; most notably China, but I doubt they want to lose the Philippines either. Mexico doesn't have an Open Skies agreement but I believe the bilateral US/Mexico treaty is pretty flexible.

Airport slots are often a bigger deal than route rights. The US and Japan have an Open Skies treaty, but getting international access to Haneda for US airlines took a ton of negotiation.