evanroberts

If your flying patterns were motivated by this team competition you might alternate between a high EQM year (150 - 200K), drop down to 50,000 or 100,000 + epsilon the next year to maintain *G or 1K, and then gain 100,000 the next year which would make you a valuable team member.

Then you wouldn't suffer too much the year you were ramping up again.

This is FT, so if the promo goes again it will change someone's flying habits!

bmvaughn

Never know until you ask. You'd be surprised the things in life which you thought were out of reach that you can get when you just ask.

UA_Flyer

More new teams and more updates in Post #3 and Post #4 as of Oct 5.

Our leader just keep on increasing its lead.

Please PM me if I miss any updates. It is better to PM me than post them in the thread.

ECOTONE

What are the chances of UA publishing the top groups at the conclusion of the competition? Would love to see how the FT crews compare to the top 5/10/50 - got a feeling like we'll have some "winners" come from this forum.

UA_Flyer

Judging from more than 250 teams registered with United in early February, I am revising my estmate to more than 1,000 team entries in this competition.

sink

From Terms and conditions (post #2)

For the names of the fifty (50) winning teams, mail a self-addressed, stamped envelope to: United Elite Team Contest Winners, United Airlines - WHQUV, 1200 E. Algonquin Road, Elk Grove Village, IL 60007. VT residents may omit stamp. Requests must be received by February 14, 2009.

JonathanIT

I had forgotten about this sign-up bonus. I think it makes the total number of registered teams meaningless, since most of the early teams signed up just to get the bonus miles. It's effect isn't even limited to the first 250, since there was no way to know if the bonus was still available until the registration was complete. I bet there were some naive members still registering on Sept. 7 hoping to get some bonus miles.

Of the hundreds (thousands?) of registered teams, I think the percentile that is seriously competing for the top 50 is probably pretty low.

Seat1A

my thinking is at the other end of the spectrum..

at the end of the year, i think the number of 200k+ teams will be in the many hundreds to a thousand or more. i have no idea where the actual line will be, but i suspect grateful ted is not as much of an outlier as they appear to be in post 4.. i think they're pretty safe to be in the top 50, tho.

my team will break 500k in gains, and i'm not entirely convinced that's enough to win.

FT is able to form more efficient teams, but there some truly insane flyers out there who can overcome the inefficiency of having to round out their team by nominating the cat for 3P.

Lightman7

Well, it won't help now, but once they publish the winners list, and we have our own FT team list with totals, we should get a pretty clear idea of the winning mileage, even if UA doesn't publish mileage. I have no doubt our top teams will be amongst the winners.

But I also expect any winning team here to post as soon as they know, so we don't have to wait for a published list!

ua1flyer

I think 500 teams tops with a 400k delta to win. What team are you on?

ua1flyer

I take it back. I say more like 400 teams with 300k delta min to win.

bmvaughn

Our team is on track for around 380k increase, and I think we'll be right on the bubble of winning.

RayinDC

I too don't think there's any chance United would post an ongoing list of team standings for confidentiality reasons, but they might be willing to add a designation on each team's individual contest results page of where that team is ranked in the standings, as well as an indicator of how many additional EQMs the last of the top 50 teams currently has: no confidentiality issue there. For teams that are in the top 100-200 (and maybe more, since I think the contest will be close), this would give them an incentive to increase their flying to the greatest extent possible. Of course, teams ranked 1000+ wouldn't have that incentive, but that doesn't mean they'd decrease their flying in response... they just wouldn't work hard to increase it. And those teams have probably already figured out from Flyertalk that they don't have much of a shot at winning.

I was on the phone with the 1K people yesterday and suggested this to them. If enough people echo that suggestion, they would probably do it.

bmvaughn

What's up with the 5 teams not listing their delta? This late in the year, if you're that far ahead, no amount of extra flying is going to spur other teams to change their patterns.

BigYellowDog

Maybe they've failed to perform and lost interest