There is a credible history over the last 8 years or so of people who have made it with well under $50K spend reporting all (or almost all) premium cabin tickets. The earned GS in our household was in this group, making it for the first time for 2017, based on 2016 spend of just under $40K out of EWR all in premium cabins, a mix of TATL, TPAC, and TRANSCON flights.

I qualified for GS the first time in late 2019 with $43K PQD ($41K on United metal) all out of EWR and all paid premium cabin TPAC and TRANSCON tickets.

My view of the anecdotal data from past years (prior to weird stuff during/since COVID) is that while low CPM (or other "yield metric") didn't preclude high spenders from making/retaining GS status, high CPM was important for the spenders below $50K.

When you all calculate your CPM, do you include award flights?

How do you determine how many of your flights are on United metal?

yes, at 0 cpm

The only thing you are paying for is the taxes! I wonder if that is somehow in a formula (like the amount of miles you spent? - not sure at all!)

That's pretty easy. Did United/United Express operate the flight or did a Star Alliance partner operate the flight?

I am still on the fence on the subject of CPM. I can see the argument for and against CPM is a measurement to qualify for GS.

There has to be a minimum spent criteria in conjunction with CPM-type of measurement.

For example, if a person flies on $10K full Polaris refundable fare from East Coast to Europe at 8,000 BIS roundtrip to arrive at CPM of $1.25, does that mean two round-trip at a cost of $20K would earn that person GS because s/he has a high CPM of $1.25? Likely not. There are not enough flight activities. Four trips at $40K could get that person in, but not $20K at the same CPM. $20K can get you 1K, though.

Another example is the same $10K (also fully refundable) to fly to Asia-Pacific from East Coast at 22,000 BIS roundtrip to arrive at $0.45 CPM, which is about 2,8 times less CPM than the transatlantic fare. Is the transpac passenger less desirable than transatantic passenger for GS consideration at $40K or $50K spending level? Passengers don't set the fares, and each is paying full refundable fare (the highest fares offered on the routes they are flying).

The transpac passengers will never be able to catch up with the transatlantic passengers on CPM measurement no matter how much they are willing to pay on each ticket. It will never be truly comparable.

I am not sure just looking at CPM provides the whole picture. IMHO, CPM is just a "by-product" rather than an established criteria or measurement.

United's mass email to current GS fliers discussing how to make it next year explicitly states that front cabin & refundable fares are important. This establishes unambiguously that CPM is important when comparing fliers with similar levels of total spend. UA wants to incentivize its most profitable fliers, not surprisingly.

Do you believe this "unambiguity" will stem the complete chaos and crazy that will occur in this thread from those getting kicked out of the club?

Regards

I think United is laying out the groundwork to avoid the challenges passed out earlier this year to placate those who lost GS in January. If one doesn’t fit the criteria UA’s laid out in the e-mail, the shorter the leg one has to stand on to complain or ask for a challenge. The culling earlier this year was a surprise to some since everything was so opaque. Some of the “opaqueness” has been lifted. UA, of course, still has a lot of latitude relative to granting of GS, but the culling earlier this year, plus the e-mail, suggests UA’s looking at this from a revenue perspective. UA isn’t doing it just to cull - United’s doing it because they think they can make more money.

I am not disagreeing with you, but feel there is more to it than just focusing on CPM.

If that is true, then there may be more GS who qualify on transatlantic routes than transpacific or Latin American routes, Refundable fares are comparable in each market but distances (miles flown) are not the same, so it cannot just be CPM. The interpretation of unambiguous languages can be subjective. Until UA specifically citing it, the debate continues.

The $18K challenge for requalification within 120 days is focused on revenue, and not the quality of revenue. I do note the messages in the mass email supersede the terms of the $18K challenge.

CPM, as I understand it, is cost per miles flown. If it its based on cost per mile awarded, then that is another story.;)

There is a good possiblity that GS qual is not a single factor and likely is multiple non-fixed factors. So reverse engineering it is not simple discussion and why no one has nailed it over all these years.

Yes, this is true. It is also true that with its most recent email to GS fliers regarding requalification, UA has unambiguously confirmed what has long been suspected by many: that one such factor beyond total spend is the purchasing of relatively expensive fares on any given flight.