United Premier Status Qualification and Award Ticket Changes...What to do...

After yesterdays, not unexpected but still annoying, news that United will be adding a spending requirement  to the qualification levels for 2014-2015 elite status my brain was spinning thinking of what that means for my flying habits. Tie that in with today's notification that United has changed their policy on changes to award tickets for general members. (Big H/T to Amol at Hack My Trip)

For tickets issued on or after June 19, 2013	General member
Fee to book award travel
Booking a MileagePlus award ticket by phone through United Reservations, regardless of departure date	$25
Booking a MileagePlus award ticket through any channel, less than 21 days before departure	$75
Fees to change award travel or re-credit miles
Making a change 21 or more days prior to the date of travel (no change to origin/destination)1	$75
Making any change less than 21 days prior to the date of travel; or changing origin/destination at any time	$100
Canceling your trip and re-crediting the miles, regardless of the date	$200

Previously you could change your award ticket any number of times as long as it was 21-days before departure. Now general members will have to pay $75 for every change and $100 for every change inside the 21-day window. The changes are still free for all levels of Premier status, but as I ponder my strategy for 2014 this throws a wrench into the system.

I love the ability to be able to change an itinerary numerous times as the flights that I want open up. The value of free changes 21-days plus allows you to "massage" and itinerary until it's perfect. For our trip to Australia and Asia we took full advantage of these rules. The trip as originally booked was just Sydney to Tokyo to Seattle. Now the trip is Sydney - Bangkok - Hong Kong - Singapore - Bangkok - Tokyo - Seattle. The generous ability to add in "layovers" of up to 24-hours is allowing us to experience four cities in Asia we didn't actually expect to get to see....all for an award ticket price of Australia to the United States. If I were a general member, and not a Premier Silver, and wanted to make these changes today I would have added hundreds of dollars in change fees as we made at least 10-15 changes to the itinerary over the past few months. So the prospect of letting my status lapse in 2014 and suddenly having to pay for changes to an itinerary is not ideal.

So what are the options....

Well lets look at the new chart again:





This year I plan to end the year with just over 50,000 PQMs and I have 47,000 already flown/booked for the future. So far I have spent just under $2000 for that 47,000 and I expect to just add about $200 to that for the final 3,000 or more miles to round out the year at 50,000 PQMs spending about $2200 or 4.4 cents per mile. While I know that others can do better than this on the cost per mile, I have limits like work during the week and a budget of about $200 per month to spend on travel so I have to be picky about what I choose to fly.

But my main takeaway from adding up the numbers is that under the new qualification system I won't even hit the Premier Qualifying Dollars amount for Premier Silver (Which is $2,500). In fact...I would be even farther away from it as the $2200 I am estimating includes airline taxes which do not count for your PQD spend. So despite flying over 50,000 miles I won't even qualify if I have the same habits next year. After a night of thinking these are the options I have thought of so far:

1. Mo Money Mo Problems: This is the strategy that I am least likely to adopt. It would mean looking for more expensive tickets to try and meet the spending requirements to requalify for Premier Gold. This would translate into increasing my cost per mile from 4.4 cents to 10 cents and a real increase in costs from $2200 per year to over $5,000 (more like $5,500 or $6,000 when you drop off the taxes). This option just not in the cards for me, I don't think. This completely blows my travel budget out of the water and spends money that I don't have. I know that for some who travel for business or who might have a bit more cash flow could make this happen. But as someone who will be just over a year and a half out of grad school, just over six months in a new city and someone who has student loans...I don't think I can swing the extra $3000 or more needed to meet the PQD limit.

2. Disregard Gold, Acquire Silver with Bonuses: I currently have Silver status, and to be honest I actually like it quite a bit. I am excited to qualify for Gold status this year, but Silver is still an OK place to be if you travel as much as I do (15-20 times a year). This strategy is one that is a bit of a hybrid and would only work if you have Gold (or I guess Platinum or 1K status, though I bet you have different priorities) status. My plan would be to stick to the rule of averaging out my cost per mile to around 4.0-5.0 cents per mile again. I would still try to get 50,000 miles or more per year and take full advantage of Gold status during the 2014-2015 qualifying period. This way I can live it up as a Gold and enjoy the added benefits for at least one year. At the end I could end up with 75,000 redeemable miles (as a result of the 50% bonus) and could spend a little extra to make sure I hit the $2,500 PQD spending requirement that would at least get me to Silver for next year to make sure I could still change award tickets without a fee, still access Economy Plus seats and still have an outside chance at an upgrade.

3. Chase My Way Into Status: As a Premier member I saw my United MileagePlus credit card annual fee come up and didn't see much value in keeping it, since the benefits were pretty much the same as Premier status, so I moved the credit line over and canceled the card. But with the new system allowing for a waiver of the PQD spending requirement if you spend $25,000 in a year on a United branded card this could be an option. Of course I would need to get a United co-branded card again, but with my US Airways Club Access expiring in December, and their impending moving to AA meaning I need a new card for lounge access anyway, I might have my eyes on the United Club Card (hopefully with a fee waiver) to try and get around the PQD requirement and gain lounge access in the process. But this is still a difficult process for me. Spending $25,000 in a year is nothing to sneeze at. I know that some people will say you can use various tricks to manufacture your spend and get this done quickly, but I am a very light player in that game. I will do Amazon Payments and a few Ice Cream runs every month, but if I were to go this route it would push my comfort zone a little bit.

4. Say Bye Bye to United: This is the last option that I could come up with. With our move to Seattle it opens the door to trying out a new airline...Enter: Alaska Air. I love Alaska and I used to fly them all the time in college on their direct Seattle to Washington National route. Then that route got really expensive and I started moving my business over to United because of their heavy presence at the DC area airports. But being in Seattle with Alaska's hub already in place I can see the benefits of switching over. Alaska generally matches United Gold status to their MVP Gold status, which has many of the same benefits. The great thing is I could then still continue to mileage run to maintain the status, and even use miles earned on AA and Delta to get to the just slightly higher qualification number via partner flights. The benefit here is that my spending habits don't have to change. I can still be picky about my flights and my cost per mile to keep the budget in check. The downside is I would have to concentrate my flying on Alaska and AA/Delta and wouldn't actually get to take advantage of the Premier Gold status I worked so hard to earn.


I don't know that I quite have my answer yet of what I plan to do...I would be interested to hear the plans of others as we go forward. Worse comes to worse, I'll just "move" to Canada. ;)

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