This has its flaws as well: an $900 LAX-JFK Y ticket is very profitable for UA, $900 LAX-SYD ticket not so. Profit-based would be more interesting, but nobody knows how much profit an individual ticket brings.

Sorry I disagree. Offering someone a $79 upsell (again assuming all Elites have been accommodated) frees up a seat in coach which allows you to accommodate another passenger on the plane. The alternative was either upgrade someone for free, or have the First seat go empty and spill the revenue. Trust me, the airline is not going to let a seat go empty if it has the opportunity to sell it.

Despite your cynicism, airlines are rational beings. They know that once the door closes, any potential revenue is lost forever. So maximize the flight load, upgrade passengers when it makes sense, and fill every seat. They have to make literally tens of thousands of choices for every flight and every fare class from the day the booking window opens until the door shuts. This is not an exact science, but they're pretty close to getting things right. Despite what we all want out of United and what we call loyalty for our years of contribution, I also want them to stay in business. Going under would be the worst thing they could do.

The level of condescending remarks on their ability to make decisions that are both good for the company, their employees, and customers is rather shocking. I've been lucky and I've seen how it works on the other side, and while many here belittle their decisions (or lack of decision in E+ for example) every decision they make has profound implications for the enterprise. So let's give them some time to sort this stuff out. Everyone here is reacting with their gut. But what we really need to evaluate is what things looks like in a year because things are likely to look vastly different.

You can't complain about a cut in the accumulations of CR-1's and then in the next sentence also complain you never can use them because the flights are more full. I think many of the elite fliers may see the opposite happen. Ability to redeem CR-1's and SWU may improve with the new scheme. The addition of CO metal and frequency in certain markets, the increase in widebody utilization to more markets too. Who knows, but things are very likely to change and once they do, I think then we can see where the chips fall.

The CR1 cut is a bummer. The instant deposit of SWUs is also a bummer - UA's way of making sure that even fewer of them get used.

To echo what others have said, the biggest problem I see on UA is that the SWU is almost unusable unless you fly on Tuesdays in Mid January... I was one of the folks who took early deposit last year and I'll end up having 4 SWUs (of 8) unused this year.

I flew E- from NRT to ORD on Sunday in 60J and it was comparable to AAs regular Economy and worse than Lufthansa's.

If UA eliminates E+, then there really will be little point staying with them. If I want to stay in *A, I can still fly UA but credit elsewhere.

Wow, UA really knows how to kick you when you're down.

Barely 24 hours has gone by since they took away some of my upgrades, and now they're sending me an email that says:

"Get the luxurious seating you want for your upcoming flight. Use your award miles today for a Mileage Plus� Upgrade Award and move up to United Business� or United First�"

I guess their smartie know-it-all MBA has a smartie know-it-all cohort in marketing.

I'm a 1K who makes it every year on BIS, usually ~115 to 125K. My business flying is (hopefully) nearly over, so I'm not as concerned as others that will be continuing to spend a lot of square butt time on United's planes. My concern is that I'll finish 2010 about 50,000 miles short of 3MM, and wondering if the current 1K for life will continue with the much appreciated SWU's. I probably should be more concerned about the CR-1 loss, but you can't worry about the things you can't control.

deek

I had the EXACT SAME REACTION when I opened that email.

It was like, hey, cool, a little salt for the wound! Thanks!

+1

Real classy, UA!

I suppose this was waiting to happen. They did try to abolish CR-1s altogether when UDU was introduced, so this is just another attempt on UA's part.

Do MM flyers still get 2 extra CR1s per year?

This is the Marketing definition of competitive. "To remain competitive, we are reducing your benefits." Being uniformly mediocre is not competitive to the customer.

People say airline seats have become commodities. THEY DON'T HAVE TO BE! If one airline would actually give a reason for people to prefer it, people would. But it seems that they all just want to offer a flying Greyhound service than a product they can be proud of.

Sez SMI/J: Like it or lump it.

It's an unprofitable industry whose major players continually go bankrupt. I don't think their track record and inane to their rationality appeals makes them immune from criticism from their customers.

Substantively, your analysis is wrong for the reasons everyone here is giving. The important metric is not maximizing the revenue for every flight or seat, but the profit per customer.

If a customer will steer tens of thousands of dollars of high margin business to you instead of your competitor (because someone else is paying for it) in exchange for flying him and his wife first class domestically a few times a year, you'd be stupid to sell the domestic F seats to someone else for an extra $50. Or at least, you'd need to be sure you're calculating your lost margin on the other flights in making your comparison.

Bottom-line - a per customer profitability view is superior to a per flight or per seat view. CO has moved recently to the latter, and it is now pulling UA with it. FFers are sticky enough in their loyalty that in the short-term this will likely be profitable; the long-run effects are less certain, and we're certainly in our right to indicate what its effect on our buying patterns will be.

As others have noted here, I don't see any "benefit" in the change for me. That said, I agree that in the end UA is a business and these changes appear to be aimed at remaining profitable and integrating two sets of elites that are not defined on the same parameters.

Fortunately, they have done this at a point in time that fits well with my opportunity to "try out" 1K status as a result of the DEQM/S promo last year--I had been a 1P and siezed the opportunity to do a few segment runs to lock up 1K so I could compare it side-by-side with AA EXP. I've already locked up EXP for next year--along with an anticipated decline in travel for next year, I think this is the final data point in my decision to stay with AA.

Barring another DEQM/S promo from UA, I've flown enough already to end up a 1P (1P- ?) next year. Assuming AA does not follow suit on elite qualification (I am primarily a segment qualifier due to most travel being domestic and under 1K miles/segment), this seems the best fit--UDU as EXP and as 1P (though probably not much upgrade success as a 1P).

cheers!

I think 3MM lifetime 1K gets hurt the most here as I suspect you no longer get SWU every year since it's 100k miles that triggers them, not 1K status. Not that I expect to reach that, but for those that do, that really sucks.

Nail on the head! ^

I will let ColoBill1 share what he heard today from a very credible UA source... And no, it wasn't a Pilot, GA or FA...

So chime in Bill and tell the FT community what you heard this morning![/QUOTE]

Come on ColoBill1. Inquiring minds want to know what you heard. Hopefully, it will be good news.

wwbgd