Good post. I only have quarrel with this statement. Maybe in reservations, it is true, but at an airport, the only supervisors who even know how any of the reward programs work, what the instruments are...are ones that used to be hourly labor units.

While many companies train supervisors in the roles of the employees, UA, at least in airport operations does not do such a thing. Their training, it matters like this comes from observing the agents. Some are curious and ask us, to explain to them what the issues are after the fact, many do not.

I rarely want to discount the value of the input from the people in the field, but this is an area where the phone contacts in reservations would provide a far better feedback than the airport ops people. Res deals with this far more than we do, as instruments of upgrade are mostly set up far in advance, while the field spends most of their time operating flights, with the reservation work being almost trivial in comparison to our operational duties. The opposite is true of call center reps.

Yah seems they do get 4, but they are good for longer:

For example, if you complete 100,000 EQMs or 120 EQPs on October 1, 2010, you will earn four (4) System-wide upgrades for the remainder of 2010 Elite year and the subsequent Elite program year.

I am (in a union,) but that doesn't mean that I don't see both sides of the argument. I was also a HDQ mgmt type and a front line supervisor (as well as a union rep.) I like the fact that the union has posted rules, and less subjectivity of superiors inconsistent application of rules, I don't like it that mediocrity is rewarded to the same extent that superiority is. I wouldn't trade in the lack of subjectiveness though for the ability to be rewarded for my performance.

Yes, the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation started in 1994, with less than 100 million of Gates's $$ (then just called the William H Gates foundation. In 2000, it got an addl 126 million. It has grown significantly since. Buffet has pledged 85% (30 billion) of his $$ to the Bill and Melinda foundation. Bill didn't start giving big money until after retirement, and Warren isn't a spring chicken now.

I find it ironic that Warren told Bill to give it away sooner...Warren is much Bill's senior (25 yrs older) and didn't contribute until 2006, at age 76, while Bill's big gifts started coming out at about 45, around retirement.


Charity aside, this still supports my initial statement that the top dogs don't give it away until they are done climbing to the top. Be it today's uber rich, or the robber barons of 100 years ago, be it 30 billion dollars, or certs. When you can no longer use it all for yourself, charity opens up.

All that trivial stuff aside, even with the "good karma" in CC, most still choose to use what they can, and give away what they won't use. True altruism wouldn't share the patterns of SWU and CR1's being common at/near expiration dates, but would have more of them on the CC board at issuance than near expiration. Perhaps the new system of getting them at threshold marks will provide an added benefit to the cert traders of providing a more uniform supply vs peaks and droughts.

Then you should support the new CR1 rule because my impression is that this is precisely what has been offered: ANY member who reaches 75k EQM automatically gets 2 CR1s, and then 2 more after that for every 25K EQM without a limit on how many can be earned per Q or per yr. The implications are that (a) 1Ps will now be entitled to 2 CR1s [they had none before], (b) every 1K is guaranteed to get at least 4 CR1s (i.e., 50% of all they would have gotten under the old rule, which is pretty good because it is unlikely that every 1K traveled at least 10k UA/UX EQM every quarter), and (c) the true road-warriors who easily do 300k EQM a year can now rake in more CR1s than they can use a year. There is a net increase in CR1 benefits, IME (this is speculation based on limited data available to me from "real life").

Of course I support the new, additional CR-1 earning opportunities (I can't force myself to call them rules, that sounds so Management to me), I said as much, but taking away 50% from a majority may be "pretty good" for you but not all 1K's. Keep 1K's at 8 CR-1's per year and grant extras if that is what is required to maintain some sort of order on the CO side.

I think your point is that there is a limited amount of wealth (CR-1's, in this case) and that we should trust you, or UA/CO/MP, to redistribute that wealth through some sort of central planning activity that we should just accept.

Again I find it fascinating that you seem assured that this change in CR-1 earning is somehow beneficial to more people. But as you say, you are just speculating based on your "real life" data.

I think that the FT Community is not as uniformly altruistic as as you led me to believe. The view expressed below about how things are or should be in this forum is closer to the reality than the one about how the "community is greater than the individual":

I intuitively feel that this analysis is closer to reality. That being the case, I think that we ultimately must decide what is good for us in an ethical way, i.e., what benefits us without adversely affecting others in the process. It is how I feel about the new CR1 "rule": I did not invent it; I have little control over it; AND it does not take away from my ability to get the most out of my limited travel funds...but it opens up to the 1Ps to which it had been previously closed, so it is a net positive...IME.

With all due respect, this is a silly argument.

By your logic, every time I, as a 1K, sit in my upgraded seat, I've "taken away" a seat from someone else who would have otherwise sat in it. Many would say that such a person has been "adversely affected" by my "decision" to upgrade rather than remain in Y. I'm a horrible person!

Look, I agree wholeheartedly that we should in generall act ethically, including doing our best to seek self-benefit without unnecessarily adversely affecting others, but extending such ethics to upgrading strains credulity. I mean, the entire institution of upgrades adversely affects all kinds of "deserving" people -- the elderly, the injured, the overweight, the large, etc. Why should such people be forced to endure Y just because they can't afford to sit in F, right? And why should any able-bodied FTer sit in F when s/he would really be just as well-off sitting in the back?

And to be clear, giving CR-1s to 1Ps will most certainly affect your ability, as you put it, "to get the most out of my limited travel funds," because the move would certainly encourage 1Ps to take NC/NF space that may very well have otherwise gone to you. Now, if you don't care -- if you feel that the ethical thing to do is to let the lower-level elites sit up front -- then by all means cancel your UDU requests and give away your upgrade instruments to friends. Fine by me. But let's not pretend that it won't have any effect on 1Ks overall.

That is your logic and not mine, so, therefore, I agree: it is a silly argument...

Here's what you wrote:

So, if I misunderstood, I apologize. Why don't you clarify, then, exactly how in the case of CR-1s we're supposed to, in your words, "decide what is good for us in an ethical way."

So what is to be gained by upsetting a small number of really good customers? If the number is so small, why not let them be 1k?

The integrity of the program. Plus, we have not established that all the 1K by points folks are really good customers.

For the sake of a consistent, even program.

If they are "really good customers" in the manner that the airline actually wants outside of the defined status levels then they'll be GS. Piece of cake.

I dissent. I don't believe that all, or even the vast "majority" of UA's "really good customers" are GS.
1K, maybe - but I'm betting against GS. While ALL GS are "really good custys", not all "really good custys" are GS, IMO.

Dave

Agreed. They claim the number is small, which means any benefits to UA of raising the qualification level are also small.

And they've gotten an awful lot of bad press here to boot. Most of us see it as a signal of ongoing/future devaluations in the program.

I was clear from the get-go: There are no ethical issues involved at all. As a mostly intl traveler, CR1s do not hold for me the value that SWUs do. So, I decided that I was not going to be bothered by the change in the CR1 "rule" because it did not affect anything. I was called "selfish" or "un-FT" because of this. A true FTer, I was told, would put the good of the "community" ahead if one's own and commiserate with the 1K members who are heartbroken for losing the CR1 perk. I felt that this "FT socialism" was a nice idea, but probably unrealistic or misguided but I said nothing until
made statements that echoed my own view on this.

As for the ethical aspects of one's dealings in FT, an example would be for me make demands about CR1s while knowing full well that those demands won't change anything for me at all. I would be making the demand for the heck of it and not because it would have an effect of any kind...

Let me turn the argument around on you and ask is somebody who does 5 transpac flights on ultra-cheap K fares a "really good customer" by UA's definition? Theoretically you can get to 100K EQMs for as little as $3000-$4000. Is this the kind of customer the airline really wants?

Apparently the answer is yes because they left the 1K qualification at 100K EQMs which is pretty easy to achieve (relatively speaking) compared to 100 segments.

UA has already begun to ratchet down on cheap segments by restricting the number of connections allowed in the fare rules. I highly doubt that there is a significant number of people who go out of their way to exploit max connections in order to gain status - at least not enough to warrant the wholesale increase in segment requirements like they did.