Another Unhappy Frequent Customer With the UN / CO Merger
 

As are many other business flyers on this forum, I am also a Million Mile Member of the Continental One Pass Program. My work associates are multi million mile members (the highest being at 4.5 Million Lifetime Miles). We have been loyal Continental customers since the 1980's, even through the drastic Continental "Lite" days. Over the last 18 months, the One Pass Frequent Flyer Program at Continental and the "so called" benefits with United have, in our opinion, gone tremendously downhill. At one time we thought that the OnePass Program was the best in the industry and now we feel that the OnePass/Mileage Plus/Star Alliance is the worse. I was lucky enough to sit with Gordon Bethune (former CEO of Continental) on a flight recently and expressed my opinions to him. Of course, he told me to be patient while all the quirks in the system were being worked out. We have been patient long enough and we have decided to take all of our travel business to another airline. Someday "customer loyalty" will be respected once again.

Loyalty is one reason. However, there is a good business reason for status. The MM status (and beyond) is an incentive for those who HAVE NOT YET achieved that status to shoot for that milestone, instead of spreading their 200+K miles per year between 2 airlines. Right now I am shooting for 3MM, but only because I know what the benefits are (e.g. lifetime 1K) in doing so. Imagine United taking that away, or demoting 1K.....

1MM is a big step (upgrade and meal priority, lifetime 1P that is now being demoted, 2CR1 annually).
2MM is not much (RCC for life, an iPOD).
3MM is another big step (above).

****My suggestion for United: Lifetime miles are used as the tie-breaker for UDU, other upgrade priorities, standbys, meals, etc. This way, EVERYONE will have a reason to keep flying.

Yikes! Typo or do you know something we haven't heard about yet? :D

1 swu = 2 cr1
 

Sounds like we have the international travelers fighting the domestic travelers. That is good reason for United to tinker with both - to our detriment. Since there is some consensus that 1 SWU = 2 CR1 (CC, cost of domestic vs. international tickets, mileage upgraded), why not adopt the following scheme:

*Instead of 6 SWU for reaching 1K, one can CHOOSE any combination of [nSWU + 2x(6-n)CR1] where n = 0 to 6.
*At the 75K level and every 25K miles beyond that, CHOOSE either 2 CR1 or 1 SWU.
*At the 150K level and every 50 K miles beyond that, CHOOSE either 2 SWU or 4 CR1

This is no different from the proposed changes in 2012, except for rubber stamping the conversion factor between SWU and CR1. CC will go out of business. Besides, United already has the "elite choice" mechanism for doing this.

My thought exactly.

No it isn't.

Welcome to FT!

BUT, What are you talking about? Benefits such as economy plus? upgrade reciprocity? CO's program has been diluted significantly with CO (not UA's) policies. Hopefully CO will be saved by United....

And incidentally, I think they should switch to a more flexible reward plan for the 75k+ elites.

They can do "Elite choice points" and you get 4 when you hit 75k, and 24 when you hit 100k.
2 points/CR-1, 4 per SWU(6 points for a SWU valid on all fares...), 1 = RCC onetime pass, 8=1 year/RCC, 16 points = premier nomination, stuff like that....

And another 4 points for every 25k you get above 100k. That would allow people to concentrate the benefits that apply to their flying patterns.

So you agree that a revenue-based program makes sense but because *I*, personally, in one online posting have not figured out all the minutea surrounding revenue sharing among *A partners you reject it? :confused:

I'm sure there is a way to equitably attribute $$ spent on partners towards a revenue-based program - I don't know what the right balance is... but the larger point still stands that a revenue-based model is inherently more fair than an arbitrary mileage/segments-based one.

Yes, typo. So used to typing 120 EQS, that I did it for miles. Thnx for correcting

Wow... hello long time lurker! :)

Wow! Having followed this thread faithfully thru 60+ pages I'd also like say WELCOME to CO lurkers in the UA thread.

Next step will be to see when FT will officially merge UA and CO forums?

So it's about what *you* need. :confused:

As a resident of fly over country, I rarely due TCONs, but when I do, the thought of doing them in E+ makes me cringe. I empathize with the bi-coastal 1K.

So SWU becomes USWU? :D

I reject not accounting for *A, which was your solution. If you've re-thought that, then, peace. ^

You're new to FT so you probably don't realize we mostly behave more like a community rather than self-interested individuals. We support each other even though UA/MP's reductions in benefits might not affect us personally. We have gained quite a few benefits and turned back a large number of UA/MP's mistakes and attempted changes over the past ~ 12 years by acting as a community. I understand that UA/MP might not like this; they'd probably prefer we adopted your attitude.


Thanks to FT efforts (I think, I honestly forget how this benefit came about) you can extend one of those SWU's to April 30, 2011 and then use one of your otherwise 'useless' CR-1's.

I actually thought I was the selfless one, saying that I did not mind "sharing" some of those CR1s that were being wasted on me...


Now, this would be a nice thing to know how to accomplish! Is there official info anywhere on how I could breathe life back into expiring SWUs by "trading in" CR1s? ^ That would be way too cool!

For the past 3 or 4 years MP has extended the expiration of one (1) SWU expiring in Jan. (and presumably Feb and Mar) to April 30. You have to have re-qualified for 1K, then call MP and request the extension. (You do not trade-in CR-1's for this benefit.)

Link


You could of course give your CR-1's away to family, friends, colleagues, staff, customers which is more of a personal sharing experience. This way you wouldn't have to rely on UA/MP to do the sharing.