United 2023 Qualifying Requirements (first The Points Guy, now UA.com)
 

Unsure if there’s another thread where it’s being discussed but thought this might be worthy of its own thread rather than buried in another one with speculation.

Per the Points Guy who says they were informed by UA, UA will have reduced requirements next year for status in 2023:



https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...71cca04ba.jpeg

https://thepointsguy.com/news/united...Xe5ANT3fv7jsOU

2023 Qualifying - Thinking Ahead, speculation of status requirements, ....

David

The Points Guy is reporting that 2023 qualification levels will remain the same as 2022.

Makes sense. The standard requirements are insane, and United has never actually applied them to a program year. The "reduced" requirements align fairly closely with the 2019 program year requirements ($15,000 PQDs were required then plus 100,000 miles). Effectively, United has just taken the 2019 program year requirements for PQDs and replaced the PQMs requirements from PQFs.

As I suspected, pretty meaningless since we won't know what promos they will do next year. For those who decided to call UA's bluff all year, they were rewarded with a status extension.

Even the reduced requirements are ridiculous for Silver. Perhaps Gold too.

And the reduced requirements for Plat and 1K are higher than 2019 IIRC

Willing to bet that won’t happen next year though

Vaccines were only approved for 18-50 mid April, for example. Those types of issues are not applicable going forward.

Why bother? Maybe just wait until next December for the next status extension. 😊

They should increase the 1K requirements back to 18K/24K, then lower in mid-2022 if needed.

It's been so long, I forgot: but did it really go to 24000 PQP (with no PQF min.) for 1K?
Just that they never actually applied that because Covid-19 hit?

They sure did, but backtracked before the end of 2020 and then just extended everyone's status and had radically lower thresholds for new 1Ks. I took a job that entailed a lot of travel in early 2020, and decided it wasn't even worth bothering to try to qualify. I switched to flying whatever I felt like and then paying out of personal funds to upgrade. I ended up enjoying DL's really great lounges in SFO and JFK, a great Delta One flight due to that decision, and spent more time on nonstops to the places I wanted to go instead of connections in United hubs, or flying AA to regional airports UA doesn't have service at. Looking back, it was definitely the right decision.

If they actually instituted these higher qualification levels and thinned the ranks - it might be a good thing as 1K now has surprisingly little differentiating from Silver. I flew on 2 Y segments this year. One got upgraded, the other didn't. Mrs Josh had the exact same upgrade success as a Silver. Wasn't able to book any fares in advance with PlusPoints to confirm upgrades, so it's been entirely WFBF this year.

I guess Silvers have to deal with the first class overheads being more full by the time they board.

And I've always wondered if anyone tried to hit the 24000 PQP thresholds in the first 3 months of 2020...

Never :D

Nobody knows at this point what is going to happen in 2022. E.g. Portugal, one of the most vaccinated countries has the most detected cases ever.

There are major markets for business travel, ie China, that won’t reopen any time soon

Thanks for the reply.
Yeah, 24000 PQP would be nearly impossible for me nowadays, and I think I only ever got to that much spend once or twice in the last ~14 years.
Once -or if- they ever 'go back' to this 24000 PQP it will be the end as a 1K for this flyer....
Oh yeah, now I remember: I actually started switching most of my flights from UA (EWR-PEK) to Hainan from JFK to PEK right before COVID hit, convinced I wasn't going to re-qualify as 1K with UA.
Dang, I miss those Hainan flights!!!

I think it's unlikely UA will "return" to the laughable $24,000-for-1K threshold in the foreseeable future.

First, business travel will not recover to levels that would allow what United might consider an ideal number of customers to hit that target. That's especially the case for international travel, which is how you quickly rack up spend. It also doesn't help that New York and California—the states UA targets for premium transcon service—have been particularly cautious with respect to the pandemic, both as a matter of state policy and general corporate culture.

Second, hiking qualifications like that it would convince many flyers, including me, not to bother pursuing 1K. A lot of people necessarily spend $5,000-10,000 on flights for work each year, and then relent and spend an extra couple thousand to improve their status. I've done so myself. But there's a massive gulf between spending an extra $2-3000 and an extra $10-15,000 to earn 1K on United. Especially when work isn't willing to pay as much of the cost.

If I'm spending $24,000 annually on flights, I'm not even that worried about 1K status. I'm already seated up front.