Could be a significant drop (percentage-wise) in GS, less percentage (upward) change in 1K.

One nice thing in LAS is some of the GAs (for whatever reason) announce the number of GSs and 1Ks just before boarding. 6am flight this morning to IAH was 3 GS and 18 1Ks. A one-third drop in GS would result in only a one-twentieth (roughly) increase in 1Ks.

OK explain details to me please. Again there were flights I often paid $1500+ in prior days to flight upgrading a $500-$600 one-way fare paid by company. Still $2000 one-way. My question is if revenue and margin is ultimate goal how much over $2000 can they get from SFO- BOS one way on any type of ticket? This is just example of many similar flights in 2023, some to smaller hubs.

If you up-fare, purchase an economy ticket from your work platform and then call GS and upgrade yourself, versus just clicking the buy up option on the website you are actually purchasing a FC fare and this should count towards the challenge as I do this on many of my domestic fares since I can only buy FC on INTL with our work platform. If this didn't count about 30-40% of my UA spend would be gone and I certainly wouldn't be GS.

You can easily "up-fare" on the website. DO NOT CLICK UPGRADE. Of course you can also call

Let's say you're on a round trip. Go to change flight, for each leg click the "change this flight" button but don't change the origin, destination, or date.
Then, you'll see a list of flights on the same dates as your original trip. If you're booked in Economy, it will show "not available" for the economy seats on that flight, but should show an ability to book to First if there are seats available. The dollar amount displayed is the fare difference In this way, you're not upgrading, you're changing your ticket to a regular first class fare. This should provide normal PQP, GS $, and all other credits as if you'd bought First outright.

In my experience, the fare difference through upfaring is the same or very similar to what they offer as upgrade offers. I never purchase the upgrades and instead up-fare via the method above.

United does give PQP for upgrades, but it's not the same as the above. It's a separate process which you can see because upgrade PQPs hit your account several days after travel.

OK thank you

Thank you!

Seems that way. Apple is rumored to be $150M in annual value for UA, and Roche, McKinsey, Facebook, Google all $30M+ and they get allocated significant GS and other amenities per year. Seems this is designed to scale back double dipping and give control back to corporate travel managers. The Corporate Travel Manager I spoke to that I referenced upthread mentioned that discounts were expanded for 2024, as were the amenity pools.

IAH-DEN this morning had 26 1K's as per the GA announcement!. She did not announce the number of GS but I boarded with the only other GS who pre-boarded. I asked him where he was based and if he had re-qualified and he said "IAD and how would I know if I had or hadn't"?

Matches my experience in DC. My employer was rumored to be $20M+ with United, and of the 12 GS I knew only one could tell you what it was and what the benefits were. Maybe it's a public sector thing, but these 11 (all earned by flying - not gifted by travel managers) were certainly nowhere near as savvy as the crowd here on FT.

We are definitely a subset on this board...

Was he headed on to MFR? If so, he might be one of the dozens there that think Global Entry is the same as Global Services!

Can anyone tell me how it’s possible not to get GS after 7 years straight with this insane spend???…. all on UA metal/international and organic!


And almost comically, not eligible for challenge and denied again after a review.



https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.fly...e4749ceae.jpeg

not sure if you’ve read the rest of this thread but I’m guessing you traveled on a corporate account / with a corporate discounted fare program? Seems everyone w that criteria has been dropped from GS for 2024.

That does seem crazy. Where are you based?

I did but the spend is 150K! basically lived on a United widebody aircraft the entire year. I am in a corporate program, but decide where, and when to buy all my tickets and usually through the United app.

Idaho

So I read this as meaning that they want only X GS for some particular corporate account, and they were already granting Y GS by normal review plus Z GS through allocation, with the problem being that X < Y+Z. So their solution was to simply cut all Y GS and increase Z to X.

Seems like another approach would have been to grant GS using their regular metrics, then do a tally of GS granted per corp account, and subsequently reduce the amenity pool offered, i.e. set Z = X - Y.

Gaming that out further, perhaps they expected or knew that their account managers at Apple, McKinsey, etc would have taken issue with having their allocations reduced, which means that they decided it was better to confuse and annoy the Y GS rather than explain to account managers that they already had nominated several of their employees for status.

Perhaps that is the right choice? But if it is, perhaps more than a minimal level of communication to members ("welcome to 1K") would have been helpful? 🤔