jhayes_1780

Was it ever a secret?

PanHam

Why? It's not exactly a secret - especially to ANA's own members.

noah

Yes, I was quoted, thanks to my frequent contributions to the thread about LH being stingy . It is worth pointing out that the author of the article is also a FT member.

I don't think the ANA tool is a secret, but I would expect this to generate an increase in new ANA FF accounts this week

Nicholas

OK guys, I'm happy to answer the questions I can both here and in the other thread, as well as to share my experience writing the column and working with UA. But I'll do that in response to comments made directly on the column's page (under the text). I'll just say that what UA management admitted was news to some very senior supervisors at reservations.

kb1992

Thank you for the efforts. ^

I am wondering if UA is the only airline in the USA that filters partner awards to its own FF members?

bostontraveler

I'm glad he wrote this article. Basic rules of competition should allow people to knowingly choose a product... MileageMinus is awful.

channa

Probably so, and I wouldn't be surprised if not all of MileagePlus is fully on board with this policy.

After all, UA realizes the importance of MP and a lot of UA's policies are designed to keep MP competitive. The StarNet filtering seems to go against this philosophy.

cstead

Because tools that give visibility into things like inventory make the airlines upset. Look at UA's recently behavior regarding Seatcounter - Seatcounter was showing upgrade and award inventory and UA issued a C&D. Also, how many MC members are there in comparison to MP? Not even close, I'll tell you that much

Of course, even a tool like the NH award search engine isn't perfect - you still need to learn how to work around married segment availability, the fact that LX isn't in there, and several other things that the average joe isn't going to know how to work around.

LilZeppelin

I can see advertisements of UA competitors -after all if that is the case, perhaps the best way to change things is to help UA competitors exploit their competitive advantages. Except of course that no-way BA-AA on TATL can only be emboldening UA.

Nicholas

Or, if you want more columns like this one, you could make a comment on the column's page (as I mentioned in the other thread), so my editors and I can see that there is enough interest in follow-ups and other similar subjects.

kctigers

this filtering i am sorry, but i really do not understand all of it... can someone please explain it in depth to me, thank you... also,
i think that with the filtering, does it go like this: ual tells one that there are no free seats on its star alliance partners, so ual, wants one to buy a ticket on ual, is this the gist of it?

well, "playing devil's advocate", if they are giving away free tickets, then no-one will buy a ticket, this sentence is very silly and i wrote it, it is the argument that some people use in regards to the buying and selling of awards, well, before issuing miles, united or any other company that issues this type of currency, should have already crunched the numbers and prepared for people to use the currency, if they issue it, then it should be able to be used. why issue it, if one can not use it?

tannebil

Has anybody ever seen anything from United that promised it would make available to MP members all seats that other *A carriers made available?

It's an interesting business issue for UA. The indirect linkage between MP revenues and seat/upgrade redemption costs pretty much guarantees that there's always going to be pressure to reduce award availability to improve profitability.

Anybody have any inside knowledge into the business reasons that United filters seats? Anybody know what the inter-company pricing looks like for *A awards or what the *A contract says about it?

mahasamatman

There was never any evidence of this. Seatcounter stopped showing upgrade availability long before this supposed notice from UA. Sorry, I still think the seatcounter people are the liars in this one.

I think it's more that UA doesn't want to pay the premium for the partner award, when they'd rather "sell" their own award for a fraction of the price.

bschaff1

I really have to wonder how much United saves by having such an nonfunctional website for booking awards making it necessary to have call center staff available to simply book awards. The other thing I liked was how I emailed two of the rather high up personnel at United about Starnet blocking and received a call back that simply avoided my complaint about Starnet blocking.

BDLORD

Ok, so what is our next step?
Can our fellow FT and author go back and ask them why they block routes UA doesn't even fly?
Good article and thank you