klaysta

Thanks, I'll try for one more Asia flight to see if I can get closer to 50k.

UA_Flyer

Unless you are traveling on someone else's money, going for GS on your own dimes can be an expensive and risky move if you still fall short of qualification.

GS is only good if you are flying. It is worthless on the ground.

mike2003242

With the price of long haul J going up dramatically I wouldn't be surprised if the minimums went up. I could realistically see new qualifications be in the mid 60s with requals lower at 50. I would also assume UA may gift GS one more year to previous long term GS as they don't want to lose that business.

Dyce

INTL: While prices did go up mid summer, that's not the case for the entire year. If you figure the first 3 months were pretty light loads due to Omnicron / countries not opening up, and in Q2 prices were quite competitive - I paid $5K RT business for multiple flights to UK and Portugal when in the past the fares would be $7K+, I doubt there's been enough spend in the last 4 months to result in an uptick in qualification threshold to the mid 60's. My guess would be 45-50 range, but we won't know until the invites go out Late December/January.

Personally I'm just hoping for new baggage tags (!) as I'm tired of seeing "2020 - Denver" hanging off my bag. Just bizarre that they did that for GS's (rotating cities on GS baggage tags, regardless of where you are actually based) - hopefully it's a standard 2023 GS bag tag with no city designator. But I'm probably dreaming about getting anything!

limey1K

I'm looking at DEN-GRU, DEN-GIG in early November and fares are stupid high in J. $!2-18K with Y only being $1800-2500.

jp12687

this.

I was a $70-80k a year flyer mostly to Asia. That hasn’t come back yet and won’t for a bit.

I do domestic flying as well- often paid first but unlike pre covid when I was flying to LAX/SFO all the time I’m flying to other cities with relatively cheap paid up front fares (600-700 round trip).

I had 1 Europe business class paid this year. I’ll Spend about $12k this year.

next year I have 5 Europe trips before July all in paid first. Haven’t booked yet. If I maintain GS I’ll do them on UA if not I’ll check out other carriers and spread the money around.

im not hopeful that UA will play the long game here and more likely to be short sighted.

Dyce

i just did GIG round trip for $5K in J, purchasing one week in advance. As GIG is only served from IAH, perhaps check DEN-IAH and IAH-GIG separately?

or go via Panama on Copa for 1/3 price (no lie flat though)

limey1K

Yeah, I priced it out separately and DEN-GIG is $15,816 and IAH-GIG is $11,806. I'm not a huge fan of PTY or Copa :-) Just a few seats open in J too on the very expensive flights..

AA wants $11,380 and 25 hours to get there from DEN

proletariat_class

IAH based, Will end the year at ~$42k PQP. Very concerned I won't get the nod.

2021 = 24k PQP
2020 = 25k PQP
2019 = 70k PQP
2018 = 67k PQP

Raven139AS

missed that this was suggested already and not sure how to delete. Disregard

I was recently looking at DEN-EZE in early Jan and also saw the stupid prices. As soon as I took off the den-Iah leg it came back down to earth…maybe the same for your needs….?

ContinentalFan

I’d push for GS if it’s not offered. You might be offered you a challenge.

proletariat_class

Yep. Even with the challenge, without China it's going to be tough.

bocastephen

I still suspect 24K PQP will be the new 2023 requirement for 1K, but not yet announced - it would be interesting to see if they give you GS or challenge you based on your prior year numbers as that might offer a hint about what's to come for the rest of the tiers.

nntman

My main use for PP is T-72 hours when I will try to push an upgrade when 3 unsold seats are left. To me that is the best GS benefit.

I don't generally bother to use PP ahead of T-72 because, as has been mentioned many times, they do not clear, and if you get a battlefield upgrade the points are deducted even though you may not have needed to use the PP (although maybe the PP gets you #1 when there are other GS on the list who did not use PP). I also have had better luck keeping the PP-upgrade (when I get it) in case of taking an earlier flight at the gate, but no guarantees and it depends on the gate agent (had a great experience at IND last month).

boolean64

Sorry to be slightly OT here, but can't find any better thread for this quickly... assume booking Premium Plus "counts" towards GS requalification just as much as booking business or full fare does...but does anyone have any insight into that?

Thanks