question about UA mileage plus: 1K vs 1P

[taipeiflyer]

recently, i have been taking several flights on UA within the united states, to visit various sporting events, etc. I have been crediting all of my miles to my BD account, since I have passed the 55,000 mileage threshold on gold, and therefore get all of my status miles converted to destinations miles. i have been giving some consideration to going for *G on a 4th carrier (i currently maintain *G with LH, SQ and BD). However, i am a little confused about the bonus difference between executive premier and 1K. On the United website, it states for 1K:
100% 1K mileage bonuses
As a 1K member your rewards include the highest automatic Mileage Plus® bonus offered - a 100% redeemable bonus on your paid miles, based on flight origin and destination on United, TedSM, United Express® and US Airways flight. This bonus is also valid on transatlantic Lufthansa flights between U.S. and Europe.

This redeemable mileage bonus is in addition to the credit you receive for the paid miles you fly, based on the origin and destination of your flights.

However, for premier executive it states:
100% Premier Executive mileage bonuses
As a Premier Executive® member, you will automatically earn a 100% redeemable mileage bonus every time you fly a paid United, TedSM, United Express® and US Airways flight. This redeemable mileage bonus is also valid on transatlantic Lufthansa flights between the U.S. and Europe. Bonus miles are in addition to the credit you receive for the paid miles you fly, based on the origin and destination of flights.

The two descriptions for the mileage bonuses appear the same. Can someone please tell me what the mileage bonus difference is for 1K and Premier executive? Also, can anyone tell me if there are additional bonuses for surpassing 100,000 miles? Finally, does anyone have experience in fast-tracking a 1K membership- say by flying 50,000 miles in 2 months. Thanks for the assistance.

[jjpb3]

No difference in the mileage bonus, but quite a difference in the special treatment(s). I'll leave it to our resident 1Ks to elaborate.

[TerryK]

No difference in bonus miles between 1K and 1P. 1K receive a lot of other goodies, mainly upgrades on UA.

http://www.united.com/page/article/0,6722,1170,00.html

There are also threshold bonus for going over various mileage thresholds. Those are mostly UA discount certificates, bonus EQM etc. Sorry, I can't find a list now.

There is a major differenec in how you are treated especially in irregular-op. However, all those only matters if you fly UA a lot. You will receive more upgrades certificates than you can ever use, however, they are valid on UA only. The only exception is UA SWU can be used on LH on airport standby basis. Since taipeiflyer flies mostly paid F, there won't be much use for those UA upgrades.

[taipeiflyer]

thank you very much for the replies. much appreciated!

[SQ LPP]

Taipeiflyer, you mention that you have *G on LH, SQ and BD now. And you want to add a fourth one, i.e. UA. Everything depends on your travel habit as well as what you expect the usage of your accumulated miles.

To be straightforward to your main question 1P vs 1K, to reach 1P you need 50,000 miles status miles, and to get 1K you need 100,000 miles. The status bonus as 1P and 1K is the same. The difference is the SWU (system-wide-upgrade, even for certain coach low fares). It looks like you don't buy UA low economy class, or you always get the premium fares. In this case, UA Mileage Plus might not be beneficial for you. As an example, I still buy those less than $1000 coach fares from north america to singapore on UA, then using my SWUs to upgrade to C. I can do that 3 roundtrips since as 1K I get 6 SWUs. And, also, I buy those low fares domestic US, and I use the "CR1 - North America Upgrade certificates" being 1K to move to C or F (depending on the route).

Okay, lets say you do travel in premium class on UA, those benefits (SWUs and confirmed domestic UG certs) can be gifted. For example, sometimes, when I have SWUs that almost expired, I would ask friends who would travel on UA international whether he/she wants to be upgraded. Or when my nieces came to visit me years back, I upgraded them from their low Y fares to C.

In short, in my opinion, if you are a high-pay premium fares, it may be not a good idea to add another *G status, i.e. stick with what you have at the moment. As for BD, yes, 55K is the gold threshold. But after that, you will get more bonuses that goes to your destinations miles (redeemable miles). For example, after reaching 55K, the next time you fly UA F, you will get 3x plus 3x bonus (I know it's not exactly right, but I am sure DeltaFlyingProf can give the correct figures). So what's the benefits? Well, it's the redeemable miles. Thus, you can have more award travels with the love ones, or to be gifted to friends and family. And yes, the beauty of the BD miles is the one-way award. Thus, for example, someone like KeithMEL who wants to start his RTW from Manila or Narita, he can take a oneway BD award to MNL or NRT to catch the beginning of his rtw flight.

Anyway, I hope I don't bore anyone to death here. Hope it helps a bit. Hope you can state the benefits you are looking for as well as your travel patterns which could be a factor in which FFP would be the most beneficial. Happy travels!

[SuperFlyBoy]

Well, just to add something about the RDM's (effectively non-status miles) given as bonus over the Atlantic flights - UA matches the actual flown miles (these are status miles/EQM's) by giving you an equivalent amount of RDM's...either on UA or LH flights.

SWU's (Systemwide Upgrades) work most of the time on LH, but one has to have the extra tension of waiting it out until the last minute sometimes - other times they clear at the lounges....

[jhm]

Also, can anyone tell me if there are additional bonuses for surpassing 100,000 miles? Finally, does anyone have experience in fast-tracking a 1K membership- say by flying 50,000 miles in 2 months.

Nobody seems to have answered these two questions.

I don't know about the latter, i.e. whether it's possible to do on UA something similar to the AA challenges.

As for the former, my understanding (but then again, I've only flown UA twice, don't have a MP account etc) is that the only benefit beyond 100,000 miles is to accumulate miles for UA MM status (lifetime 1P I believe for *G) ?

As we all know, there's no more lifetime status on SQ. LH has lifetime status but that only applies at the beginning of old age (55 or 60 ?). BD has lifetime status after 10 years but it's questionable whether BD will be around in a year let alone 10 years!

[SQ LPP]

AFAIK, there is no such thing similar to AA PLATINUM Challenge for UA Mileage Plus!

[SuperFlyBoy]

I don't know about the latter, i.e. whether it's possible to do on UA something similar to the AA challenges.

In fact, UA has now started to status match on a basis similar to AA's, while previously they would match practically anything to at least 1P (*G) level.

With regard to fast-tracking 1K, there was a buy-in program available early last year (with only the "name" of 1K, with no SWU's, where one could fly a certain amount and then get the status. For most, the lack of SWU's was of no use.

As for the former, my understanding (but then again, I've only flown UA twice, don't have a MP account etc) is that the only benefit beyond 100,000 miles is to accumulate miles for UA MM status (lifetime 1P I believe for *G) ?

Actually, there are bonuses after flying 40k, 70k, 130k 210k or something like this....

FT is the best place to look for info on this parameter!

[SuperFlyBoy]

AFAIK, there is no such thing similar to AA PLATINUM Challenge for UA Mileage Plus!

Actually, there is - read through this thread: http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showt...8&goto=newpost.

There is no update in the first post about the current UA status-match program (ala AA's chAAlenge), but you can read through some of the other "clutter" to find it quickly...

Edited to Add: From a quote in the thread: "premier executive match that requires 15k miles or 18 segments in 90 days to keep it until February 2009"

[zvezda]

I have Star Gold on BD, LH, SQ, and UA. I would not bother to maintain Star Gold on UA except that I have lifetime 1P status as a MillionMiler. I recommend that you continue to credit the excess miles to BD rather than starting up with UA.

[KeithMEL]

The main question would be whether taipeiflyer is going to be flying enough on UA to justify earning UA status. It seems to me like it is more apparent in the US that 'home carrier' status seems to be more advantageous than general alliance-wide status on a partner carrier. Particularly with regard to getting protected when things go wrong, getting a nice seat (E+ isn't offered to non UA *Gs), the upgrade instruments and various other little favours you get from staff.

I remember when a UA flight of mine was canned and I was rebooked to a much much later one. My LH*G status didn't do me much good on standbys for the earlier flights due to the large number of people with UA status (was flying out of ORD). No alternative solution at all. But I showed them my UA card which had 1P status at that time and immediately got a resolution - they got me a seat on US which was leaving around the same time. You also get access to elite lines and avoid the ICCs, mostly anyway.

The same thing has happened several times in the past with AA flights, though this has more to do with standby clearance than getting booked on to alternative flights.

So if taipeiflyer is going to be flying rather extensively on UA, it might be worth getting some form of status on UA.

Of course it'd also be worth working out whether the metaphorically bigger smiles you get with UA status is worth giving up the superior earn/burn on BD.

[HUGE AL]

In short, in my opinion, if you are a high-pay premium fares, it may be not a good idea to add another *G status, i.e. stick with what you have at the moment. As for BD, yes, 55K is the gold threshold. But after that, you will get more bonuses that goes to your destinations miles (redeemable miles). For example, after reaching 55K, the next time you fly UA F, you will get 3x plus 3x bonus (I know it's not exactly right, but I am sure DeltaFlyingProf can give the correct figures). So what's the benefits? Well, it's the redeemable miles. Thus, you can have more award travels with the love ones, or to be gifted to friends and family. And yes, the beauty of the BD miles is the one-way award. Thus, for example, someone like KeithMEL who wants to start his RTW from Manila or Narita, he can take a oneway BD award to MNL or NRT to catch the beginning of his rtw flight.

Well said, SQ LPP. In discussing this with taipeiflyer, I did mention that if he really wanted to go for status on another *A perhaps he should look at going for NH Diamond...and possibly CIP status beyond that. Does anyone on SQT have experience with this, or is TOF a better resource?

[sudsoz]

Of course it'd also be worth working out whether the metaphorically bigger smiles you get with UA status is worth giving up the superior earn/burn on BD.

Is the earn/burn on BD really any better when you take into account the 100% of earned miles bonus for UA Premier Executive?

No-one seems to have said what taipeiflyer does with his miles. If he travels in F on paid flights then it is clear that upgrades will not help unless the system gives him surefire upgrades so he can book and pay for a lesser class or surefire redemptions.

UA has two redemption tables - one is the regular table that is roughly similar to other *A carriers and which they call 'Saver' awards but there is also another table for 'Standard' rewards which uses roughly double the miles but makes the redemption availability much more certain. That might be valuable to him.

[KeithMEL]

Been yonks since I've closely examined and compared *A FFPs so I'd have to defer to the real experts on this one. But my general observation has been that whilst both UA MP and BD DC are great in earn/burn, UA MP seems to offer less availability than what is actually available via Starnet if redeeming on carriers other than UA unless one is using the 'non saver' option. Also BD DC has the great value Cash and Miles option, which I've recently taken advantage of.