Repooc17

I am a typical transcon pax - e.g. EWR to SFO.

I am currently north of 60 PQF at an average PQP of $200 per. Of course, if I consolidate all of my flying to UA, I would probably achieve 1K. All in, I am over 120 flights for the year.
​year.
​​​​​​Me personally, I don't give a rats behind about status. No one in my close circle knows I have status because I don't talk about it, ever.

uastarflyer

I assume PQP for award flights credit to the passenger, not the person whose account redeemed the ticket using miles. Confirmed?

eng3

At some point, there will suddenly be alot less PP in the system if PP ever expire and earning rate goes down (2K to 3K per 20PP).

I don't understand the logic of awarding PQP for award miles. It's great for us, how does it help UA? Don't they "lose" money when we use our miles (instead of waiting for them to devalue more)

zombietooth

Time is money, and I always buy the cheapest F ticket with the minimum total transit time, which is often on AA or DL. Segment runs are not worth your time or your money. As a 22+ year 1K, my UG rate has never been lower. Don't fall for the hype that, with fewer 1Ks, there will be more PZ space made available. It won't happen. UA's algorithms are much better at figuring out how to get pax to buy up and will only improve in the future. The one thing that I am sure of is that UA will extract more cash from its 1K and GS flyers in the future and will dish out fewer UGs.

Think about the ridiculous hypocrisy of UA here. They continually tout their ESG goals, and reducing the carbon footprint of air travel, while simultaneously incentivizing their 1K flyers into adding segments to their itineraries for no other purpose than to achieve status.

drewguy

Miles are currency at this point, and UA needs to make them have some value to elites, who are the primary ones earning them. Yeah, I can burn them on non-status relatives and upgrades but at this point I almost don't care about RDMs. Now I do.

frappant

Would be interesting to try to quantify how many members here will bail on trying to maintain 1K status or any status with UK as a result of these changes.

Some people won't bother with 1K but would they still fly United enough to get a lower status?

Some people say they are going to be free agents, doesn't mean they won't fly United given the route and fare?

Others may say "bye, more for me" and decide to target 1K again? Haven't seen too many express this POV.

Maybe a poll here would be instructive.

Polytonic

Isn't that the whole point of a mileage program? Incentivize me to spend money on United on a highly contested route rather than go with Delta or Alaska?

I'm getting even *cheaper* fares via corporate/discount rates, and even then I'm considering booking away from United. For my two top routes, SEA-EWR or SEA-IAD are pricing out to around $186 or so on corp rate for the month of January. So this just further hurts any domestic OPM flyer on negotiated corp rates if anything. The math gets even worse for shorter segments. $200 RT SEA-SFO? Flying 27 roundtrips gets you all of 5500 PQP at best (or let's assume you pay close in pricing at $500 RT, so 11k PQP) and I can't imagine anyone deciding to tack on segments for something as short as SEA-SFO.

This is the crux of the problem as I see it. A high segment flyer is unlikely to come anywhere close to meeting the PQP figures based on how cheap economy is (even taking into account inflation).

A high spend flyer is not going to come anywhere near the segment requirement, and if they're prepared to drop another $6k to overcome the higher PQP hurdle, chances are they can afford to go free agent and status is ultimately meaningless.

Who is United trying to target? I'm guessing the occasional law/finance exec whose company pays for F and they fly in Y on personal dime?

PTahCha

UA has not announced any changes to the Chase PQP rules either other than the increase in earning ability, so why assume it's going away? (shrug)

zombietooth

They're hoping to incentivize elites with huge balances to burn their miles on expensive awards, not at the bargain levels. They will be cleaning-up if they can pull this off; selling miles to the CC companies for a penny and redeeming them at a quarter cent is a fine business model.

lsquare

At a minimum, I'll be a UA Silver since I intend to requalify for Marriott Titanium status.

cfischer

I'll blow past $24k PQP before I make 20 PQF ... I usually don't hit anywhere near 54 ...

I am at 35k PQP and 29 PQF as it stands this year ...

jsloan

Exactly. You and I are at entirely different ends of the spectrum. No one program is going to satisfy everyone.

frappant

Yeah for people who pay for their own tickets, instead of company-funded travel, it may be possible to spend $18k but what are people going to do, book international business class tickets with 2 or more connections each way?

Even then they can't make it, they'd have to book a whole lot of domestic flights.

Are a lot of people racking up a lot of segments on their own personal/leisure flights? Are milage runs still a thing?

Tomasz Pa

hmm looknay this from bay area corp sending people to asia in polaris. it is just 4x round-trips from SFO to TPE.

cfischer

anything else would be a HUGE surprise to be honest. I already have 240k miles UA flights booked for 2023 (4 IN/JN round trips) ... that's an extra 2400 PQP for each of us. No difference on my end, but it will help Mrs. cfischer reach a higher status