United Airlines has introduced a nifty new website for tracking MileagePlus status: nothing revolutionary, but knowing how much you have to spend to attain or maintain elite status is now very transparent.
Here’s the website and watch this one minute video United put out explaining it:
Here’s a look at my details with the specifics removed-
Certainly a smooth interface, which also tracks spending on your United-branded Chase credit cards, but it won’t get me to spend money any faster on United.
With award charts inflated and a new revenue-based earning structures for award miles coming in March, flying on United is must less attractive than before for the leisure and price-conscious traveler, but this is the reality of a healthy and compacted airline industry in 2014, so rather than complain, we must adjust.
This site is a glaring reminder that I am a frequent, but not a valuable customer to United. As a MillionMiler, I ostensibly have gold status locked away for life (unless UA changes its mind) and starting in 2015, I am going to have to get used to no longer being a top-tier elite.
How dumb can United be to highlight an example where based on miles in previous years, the flyer would be a Gold, but given PQDs factored in, she’s now only Silver?
She’s an 8.8 CPM flyer – precisely the type of consumer UA is now trying to “fire”.
Fail.
Is anyone else getting steadily antsier for the new website? It was “in progress” on 3/3, a “priority” on their earnings calls, partially leaked in a TV ad, and now it looks like they’re pulling a weird soft opening with two content management systems working simultaneously.
With all of the interest in Google’s Material Design, and with the new United look fairly “Material” itself, this is the perfect time to release… Except that the holiday season is coming up and who wants to release a new site into a peak travel time?