United’s unfriendly short flights
Have you noticed that United Airlines doesn’t use the “Friendly Skies” slogan any more? No wonder.
The company does a lot of things now that aren’t great for customers. For example, now you have to pay to get a seat with an extra couple of inches of legroom… at rates ranging from $14 to $109 or more, each way.
And now they’ve changed their frequent-flier program, called Mileage Plus, to take away some of the benefits of taking short flights. It used to be that you accrued miles on Mileage Plus based on how many miles each flight segment was… but if you had a short flight segment of less than 500 miles, they rounded it up to 500. So, if I flew from San Francisco to Los Angeles for a connection, that counted as a 500 mile trip.
AccruedMiles = Max(ActualMiles, 500)
As of July 1, that’s changing to
AccruedMiles = ActualMiles
To ensure that Mileage Plus miles earned toward elite status and award travel on United are aligned with actual miles flown, we are revising our base accrual policy. Beginning July 1, 2008, for flights of less than 500 miles, passengers will earn redeemable miles equal to the actual miles flown. Elite Qualifying Miles (EQM) will also be awarded based on actual miles. Elite Qualifying Segments (EQS) are not affected.
This new mileage accrual structure will apply to travel on or after July 1, 2008, regardless of when the travel was ticketed. Flights of less than 500 miles flown on or before June 30, 2008, will accrue Mileage Plus miles under the previous policy of a minimum mileage accrual per individual segment flown.
United just gets less friendly every day. See my comments in February about the new carry-on luggage restrictions.