United Silver Status - Experiences/Q&A {Archive}
 

Hello
A newbie around here, have been lurking around the forum a few days and this is my first post. Any Advice is greatly appreciated. Please excuse me if this does not belong here or if this has already been answered.
I am all psyched as I made it to the Silver Status as of today. Know it’s only the low life of the Elite but still pumped up. I understand it depends on person to person but again hoping for a friendly Guru to advice, I usually fly 10 – 14 trips a year and most of the trips are between TPA and EWR which yield a very low milage at at a very high CPM :(
I already have a Credit card with United (Since Continental days) so I get the benefit of checked baggage free option. The only benefit I see with the Silver Status is Priority Status access and possibility of getting an E+ seat during checkin. Won’t believe in any feasibility of getting any CPUs as a Silver unless Santa promises me one in person.
My spending in all for the said 12 flights till date this year came up to ~ 5K. Most of the higher priced tickets are work related due to quick bookings though. And I cannot do multi segment for these work related due to various constraints. Based on the Given Data would it even make sense to Struggle for an Elite Status or Loyalty as I have may a times seen that there is an alternative airlines mostly the likes of Spirit, southwest and sometimes AA or JetBlue that offer a better priced ticket directly or thru other deal sites?
I have atleast one international trip planned for next year and am not against MRs if I could learn how to do them which i hope to learn from the forum. but to start with I am still debating on the loyalty and status chase as a silver.

You'll only really know once you try out Silver and see if it makes a difference. The popular opinion is weighted fairly evenly.

If you end up close near the end of next year, an unscheduled vacation makes a nice trip instead of a pure MR.

Maybe the moderators will move your thread over to the United forum. Then you'll have more opinions than you ever wanted.

thanks for the quick response!!!
 

Thanks so much for the quick response. Just boarding an other flight as I type. Just Curious these miles past the required for elite status would it be useless or would it be carried over to next year to give me a head start?

There's no rollover for United. Obviously you'd earn the redeemable miles tho.

One more thing to consider are the unpublished benefits of Silver. It tends to prioritize you above non-status folks in irregular operations. If half the plane is non-status, that helps. Also can make conversations easier, as it sends the message that you probably know a little something about travel and aren't a "kettle" occasional flyer. Some evidence it helps in getting compensation if things go poorly...

"Won’t believe in any feasibility of getting any CPUs as a Silver unless Santa promises me one in person."

Santa is the guy in front of you and behind the Golds. He can promise to let you sit on his lap if he's upgraded, but that's about it.

However, if you're flying on the evening of the 24th, you can ride up front with him since he's honorary GS for a day and gets to nominate someone as his helper.

First, welcome to FT!

If you're travelling at off-peak times you might well get some upgrades. Since you're travel pattern is consistent, you'll be able to judge if it's happening -- and then if it (or the other benefits) are worth it to you.

Course what you need to do is tell your boss you need more trips -- and reach for gold.

Don't forget about the RDM bonuses! For Silvers you get a 25% bonus miles on flights, so if you fly 25k miles a year, that's 6,250 free miles a year -- or halfway to a one-way domestic saver award. Not bad, plus the bonuses apply for travel on not just UA/UX, but also US Air, Air Canada, and Lufthansa group flights between the US and Europe.

For me, the RDM bonuses are one of the best things about having status, and what made booking a couple of MRs to get 1K economically feasible for me. As a 1K, you get a 100% bonus on RDMs, so taking a single 12,500 mile trip from SFO to Europe effectively gets me a free round-trip domestic saver award.

All UA elites also get a 500 mile minimum EQM/RDM on all flights, which can be fantastic if you find yourself connecting up and down the East coast, for example. You said can't do crazy itineraries because of work, which is understandable... but if you somehow happen to find yourself "having" to add a leg from TPA-FLL or IAD/PHL-EWR every now and then, you can add a thousand miles to a trip, and that can add up.

Premier Silver Qualification - Newbie Question
 

Hello all!

I accidentally qualified for UAL's Premier Silver status in 2010/2011 after taking a trip through my graduate program to Asia. Unsurprisingly, I fell in love with the benefits and have sorely missed them this year. I've begun traveling quite a bit for work and am on the brink of re-qualifying, but since I haven't done it on purpose before I have a quick question I'm hoping your expertise can help me with.

As of today I have 22,534 EQM. I also have three trips scheduled:
12/12-12/13: ORD-DCA-ORD - 1,224 EQM
12/19: ORD-DTW-ORD - 470 EQM
12/25-1/2: ORD-PWM-ORD - 1,800 EQM

By the time I complete my trip on Christmas day I should have qualified for Premier Silver with 25,128 EQM. Will this be the case even though I will not have finished out my last reservation with the second leg of the roundtrip? Am I at risk for missing out on qualification? Any advice would be appreciated! Thanks!

Welcome to FT!, codris
yes, miles post segment by segment

does not appear so (only other issue is 4 segments need to be flown UA metal but suspect you have that covered)

Any Benefit to M Fare for Silvers?
 

I know that 1K's get an instant upgrade on M fares but is there any benefit for a silver on an M fare?

Thanks

Can't think of one, other than that you might be in the 40s on an UG list when all the other Silvers are in the 50s...

Actually - that might make your TOD offer even cheaper. Esp. since an M fare is often more than the lowball V-Ups...maybe they'll pay YOU to sit in F! ;)

The best benefit to Silver, in my opinion, is the E+ seating. This was obviously cut back as a benefit by changing it to T-24 hours only for silver, but I in general have not had trouble with getting it on my flight routes at least (domestic, ex-ORD). Priority security is nice as well, if you don't have it through your credit card. I think I've gotten one CPU since the merger--I used to get them once in a while before but that's essentially gone as a benefit to me.

About 75% of my travel is for work, and United is our "preferred" carrier, so it makes sense for me to stay struggling for Silver every year. I usually take United when traveling personally as well in order to get those EQM/EQS, if the price difference isn't substantial. All in all, it's a lot of little benefits that individually aren't much, but gives enough when combined to make traveling a bit more enjoyable.

I got one upgrade as a sliver, but one > none!

Best benefit would be E+ closely followed by premier access.

Even with the 24h rule I always get a decent E+ seat by "circling the parking lot"

Is this still the case? I lost my status after my twins were born ~2 years ago, but I just gained it back. :) At any rate, I couldn't find this benefit mentioned anywhere on united.com, and it's not reflected on their mileage calculator. This would be hugefor me, as I often do sub-500 mile, intra-California flights. And it would make retaining my (lowly) status much easier. ^ I was worried that this benefit had gone the way of the dodo.

Here:

http://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/Mark...es/united.aspx