uanj

On the earning's call yesterday UA executives reiterated no material changes to MP at this time. However, Kirby made a comment that there is "significant opportunity to do even more with it". "A lot more detail" to be revealed in the upcoming Investors' Day early next year.

Black clouds appearing on the horizon? Thoughts, anyone?

Dyce

‘material’ can mean many things… for example I wouldn’t consider the 1K requirement being bumped from $24K to $25K to be material… and I’m sure there’ll be some form of negative change(s).

The good news is after seeing the Delta pushback they’d be pretty dumb to make massive downgrades… but there will be some changes otherwise they’d have simply said no changes…

Kmxu

Any change to MP qualification thresholds has to be announced before Dec. 31, 2023. UA can devalue award miles anytime.

What black clouds? Glass is half full now after DL’s change of minds.

vicontt

They need to bump the qualification requirements up, it's ridiculous how hub to hub everyone is at least Gold. And they should eliminate priority boarding / checkins for silver.

scubadu

LOL, there are always black clouds on the horizon with these programs going forward. There will literally never be "clear skies" again.

Regards

drewguy

Well, I guess it's time to split some hairs on business related spend. If you're responsible for procurement and buy things like office chairs or computers or whatever, yeah, a lot of places will have a business card for that. But not sure that's really different from someone responsible for buying an airline ticket to do their job - visit a client, worksite, etc. but in those instances they may, per cmopany policy, put the spend on a personal card and obtain reimbursement. Both are "business spend"

as219

Did you not just see what happened -- and is happening -- over at DL? How, praytell, is UA supposed to simultaneously increase qualification requirements and provide less service to the vast majority of elites, and then expect to make more money in the end?

ty97

I've seen a lot of references like this (in both the UA and DL forums) recently but I haven't seen an explanation of why people think it is ridiculous. Why does it matter if there are a lot of second-lowest tier elites on a hub to hub route?

What benefits would even be left for Silver?

drewguy

Well, E+ at checkin and one free bag.

But, yeah, generally speaking a fair number of people feel that status should be accorded only to people who fly exactly as much as them or more, because the herd is too big.

vicontt

Well, this something I explicitly called out in my message, didn't I?

I don't want to discuss Delta here, but they got it all wrong )

Because majority of benefits are zero-sum game (notable exception being checked bags and to some extent e+ seating)
If 3/4th of the plane have priority check-in, no one has priority check-in. If the same amount of people have priority boarding, there is no priority boarding. I"d rather have lower status with the benefits I can use than the higher status which is nothing more but a badge.

Free bag, E+ at checkin, CPU at the lowest priority if they happen to travel on the empty plane.

Nah, that's not it - like I said, better have some benefits without a badge, than no benefits and a badge.