elpaso915

Hi everyone! New joiner and first time poster to flyertalk.

I was 1K this past year, and had 100+ PQF's and 54K+ PQP in 2023, and was based out of EWR.

I haven't heard anything yet and was wondering people's advice?
1. Is there still any chance of GS at this point or if I haven't heard by now am I mostly likely not getting called up to the big leagues?
2. Is there any recommended steps on trying to reach out / appeal in some way? Or not even worth it given lack of chances anything actually moves the needle?

Really appreciate anyone's perspective on this!!

ironmanjt

In the past, this would have been just at the edge of making it maybe...esp based in EWR. They've made the nominations for this year, so if you haven't heard you're not getting it.

While it can't hurt to call, have a read of the whole thread: if you travel on a corporate contract/discount there are people with 2-3x your spend not getting invited as it seems all corporate customers have been canned unless they're nominated by their travel manager. Good luck!

benewr

What all of this means is that the airline industry is so concentrated with only 3 big normal airlines that they all figured out that they no longer need to fight for customers and that there are enough passengers to fill all/most of their flight anyways so why would they need people to be loyal.

TomMM

Or they want to make it a more exclusive club.

ContinentalFan

Welcome to FlyerTalk!

I’d definitely call and see what they can do. There’s a chance that you just might be offered a challenge.

BOS_Flyer

BOS based. I've been Global Services for 4 years, but lost it this year in 2024 despite having 76,013 PQDs and 85 PQFs in 2023. Very frustrating!

I'll likely switch to Delta as primary carrier.

jackw007

This thread has been really interesting. I'm not exactly sure what United's motivations were for dropping fliers with $100K+ spend from GS status were, but I have a hard time believing that it was because their company had a contract that gave them discounts. That's still $100K in real money that's being spent. It's hard to believe that would not be considered important. And I do understand the anger of not being offered GS, let alone not being offered a challenge. That seems inconceivable.

But I sort of have a different perspective on all of it. I've been GS since 2017, and a United flyer for about 30 years. My company really limited my travel last year, and as a result between company and personal travel I only spent about $35K. All of it was premium fares (on a company discount), but it was still down from the last few years. It turns out that I was offered a challenge, and I'll end up meeting that by February, as my travel has picked up again. So I won't be too upset about a couple of weeks at 1K.

But the thing is, I'm less than 100K miles from 3 million lifetime. And the vast majority of that was domestic. A great deal of it was changing planes in Chicago and Denver and IAD and taking regional jets to smaller cities so that I could stay on United because I wanted to be 1K and have the benefit of assistance when inevitably I was stuck somewhere due to flight cancellations or missed flights. Or to use award travel to fly my wife and daughter or parents somewhere. And I almost always hit that 100K mile mark when 1K meant actually flying 100K miles.

In short, I wasn't one of United's biggest spenders that produced extra profits. But I was one of the much larger group of customers that kept the lights on.

All carriers get to decide what the rules are for their frequent flyer programs. And that's especially true for the special "invite only" programs. And I can tell you, when I eventually did get that invite after spending just shy of $60K, it was night and day better than the 1K level. It's hands down the best loyalty program I've experienced. I'm Lifetime Titanium at Marriott, I've been a Marriott Ambassador level member, President's Circle at Hertz - those don't even compare. Not even close.

So yeah, I was disappointed when I realized what my spend was going to be and that I'd likely lose GS status. But then I was offered the challenge and knew that I was going to hit that, and that the challenge figure over a full year projects to not much over the $50K spend mark that was speculated to be the GS invite trigger. So it's really only expecting you to spend what many of us guessed was the rate required for GS during that window. And the floating window actually makes that easier.

So while I totally agree that the $100K spenders without an invite have a right to be upset, for those of us closer to the $50K mark (or below) I think it's sort of a first world problem sort of thing. I don't say that as a knock against anyone who feels disrespected, everyone has a right to a personal standard as to what represents an appropriate demonstration of respect for loyalty.

But I really appreciate the opportunity to earn re-admittance to GS. Maybe I'll feel differently if my spend stays the same and then I'm denied an invite next year. But in the meantime, I've spent so much time as a loyal United flyer without GS status that I appreciate every bit of the extra benefits from GS.

IAH-OIL-TRASH

Kirby gets you to spend a bunch of money this year then says UA can’t invite you to GS next year and provides no challenge

ironmanjt

This is just speculation at this point. This is second year in a row where I'll meet it via challenge, so hard to say what they're thinking...

Boghopper

They are done with notifications. And given the data available I think that pqf number is much too high for the pqps to get gs. But no harm in calling and asking fo a challenge. But anecdotally the challenge is only for prior gsers.

ironmanjt

Have we any evidence that PQP/PQS matters? In the past, we had pretty strong evidence of a $50k threshold, and now we have pretty good evidence that corporate contracts can't "earn" GS....but I haven't seen anything past speculation that PQP/PQS might matter?

fumje

There has long been speculation that cpm mattered, which would be correlated with pqp/pqs.

But I tend to suspect it's not a headline metric for their determination, rather that it indicates a balance skewing more toward ZP or STLKG fares instead of J or YBM fares.

UAgeek71

I've posted a similar take on PQS numbers before, but PQS isn't a great metric by itself.

If you're a hub based flyer, then a high (100+) PQS could be a disqualifying factor, based on cost to serve.

If you are from an outstation or non hub, where you most of the time taking a connection, then 100+ PQS isn't necessarily a bad number.

Of course, as we have seen in this thread, UA is free to use any metric they choose. If they simply cut off high PQS as a deal breaker for GS, without considering base location, that is ignoring a percentage of customers - who could be very loyal and have a high spend in premium fares, but also likely have much more freedom to go to alternate carriers as they are used to connections and not hub captive.

Boghopper

look at the spreadsheet and some of the high pqd types who are being denied. Nothing official, and there will never be.

ironmanjt

some. But as any statistician would say looking at the spreadsheet the PQD correlation was very strong. CPM is very weak at best.

you’re right we’ll never know for sure - which is exactly what UA wants (and they could even have thrown a few random members under the bus to make the trail weak) but..: