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Comment by simonebrunozzi | Hacker News Reader

I liked the article. This madness is real.

I used to fly 110 times/year for work, internationally. I had gold status with several airlines at once. I did this for about 8 years (although the last two years I went down to about 80 flights/year).

I live in SF and, of course, I have to fly United if I don't want to make one connection every time I fly somewhere in the US. And I am a Premier 1k member.

I can confirm that the perks are almost useless; that this absurd race loses any meaning when everybody else is racing with you. How can Premier 1k be good, if I'm not among the top 1% (the only case in which automatic upgrades and such would actually be useful)?

All in all, I hate United. And I'm not the only one [0].

By the way, why does Google NOT provide this link when I search for "Untied"? [1]

[0]: http://www.untied.com/main.shtml

[1]: https://www.google.com/search?q=untied&oq=untied&aqs=chrome....

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Former 1k flyer here. The perks used to be nice. I'd show up at Logan and they'd already have me rerouted if my flight was delayed (and of course, upgraded to 1st class).

OK, so that was the one perk. That and the red carpet clubs used to actually be nice. I remember spending some miles on my wife's membership so she could enjoy a drink while waiting for me at the airport... then a month later the security lines being moved in front of the club so she couldn't get in.

All my miles were spent on other people. It's surprising how many people will hit you up when they need to fly somewhere but can't afford it. For the longest time I was saving up for a trip to Asia on one of those lay-flat seats in a private suite. I was close when my wife mentioned to me that she sent her brother, his wife, and their kids to Kansas. Freaking Kansas... oy. They might have said thank you.

In all the years I did it, I had one proper "free" vacation. It included a suite at a crazy nice hotel in Manhattan well above anything I could afford.

All that flying and being a 1k made me bitter. I hate traveling now because of the way they treat the no-ks. I'm bitter with the casual travelers who don't understand how to get through security with any efficiency at all. I'm bitter with security for it's intrusiveness that provides no security at all. I'm bitter with the airlines for putting their most jaded and customer service averse flight attendants on the planes that go wherever you want to vacation. I'm bitter with the guy who puts his bag in the overhead 3 seats back and has to swim upstream when we're departing the plane. The list goes on. Don't even get me started on the "$25 extra for a bag or a seat upgrade" I'm an angry old man in airports.

For anybody still putting in the time in the air - look into surfair. Chartered flights out of private airports for a monthly membership fee. No TSA, No lines. No last minute $2500 tickets. It's awesome. Limited range of cities though.

Not even having to fly nearly that much I can relate. Mostly to the "swimming upstream" and "efficiency at security".

Mishaps happen (I forgot I had bottled water with me in security on my return flight last time). But simple things like pulling out your belt early, having your electronic devices at hand, having your boarding pass at hand and so on go a very long way in making sure, that everybody will be through security faster.

I also am amazed about how lots of people treat these security persons.

I learned being a decent human being will get you a very long way in most cases. For example my mishap from above. Security allowed me to drink from the bottle, while I went through (not in the scanner though). So I only had to dump a nearly empty bottle in the end, not a totally new one.

I just was friendly, made clear, that it was my mistake and apologized for the inconvenience to the sec person. he rest ist the story told above.

I'll disagree that the perks are almost useless. But they can be a bit subtle. In comparison to people's typical experience flying, as a United 1K:

When I call the 800 number, a real human being picks up right away and helps me. If I'd like to catch an earlier or later flight, if it's within 24 hours, I can usually make the change with no charge. I use this perk dozens of times a year, and it even enables me to book cheaper flights because I'll usually be able to make adjustments on the day of travel. If I end up on the standby list, I'm put at the top (because it goes in order of highest status before first come first served). If I use miles to book a flight, I can cancel or change the flight at any time. This lets me speculatively book a vacation flight to Maui months ahead of time when availability is good, even if I'm not sure I'll be free then. My entire family gets free bags and free extra legroom seats when they travel with me. I get to sit in fancy lounges when traveling overseas. And the first class upgrades are a nice bonus.

Arguably, United is intentionally providing a lower class of service to those that haven't reached your level. It's all relative - but you're not getting "good"; you're getting "not bad."

This is the way I always phrase it: "Airline status simply means I'm treated like a human being."

Airlines make no money. They can't afford to treat everyone like that.

Actually, that is a popular misconception. Airlines have been highly profitable for the past few years. It is directly related to the degraded consumer experience. More capacity discipline and new ancillary fees have really boosted margins. Also, the cost of fuel has plummeted.

United's average quarterly profit margin over the last 5 years is 4.37%.They've dipped into quarterly losses three times during that period. They're not "highly profitable"--they're just not losing money for once.

I don't know, I'm BA gold and I've honestly seen the quality of service go way down as my status rose.

You can't make free changes anymore, their new point redeem costs are too high, I only got an INVOL upgrade once and honestly haven't had one single flight experience with them that warranted handing my golden ticket to a crew member in the last year.

In fact, just a few months ago we were neglected pretty badly in their flagship A380 LHR-MIA in club world (business).

The lounges are still pretty good, plus I get to go to the Japan Airlines lounges in some airports, those toilets are a palace.

By the way, why does Google NOT provide this link when I search for "Untied"?

Because Google has (reasonably) understood that it was likely a incorrectly spelled request for united.com, which is clearly evident from just looking at Google Trends[0]. Note that they do offer a "did you really mean" link which will force the search for untied.com and then it's the number 1 hit.

[0] - https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=untied.com%2C%20unit...

> I can confirm that the perks are almost useless

I don't know anything about United. But my status on SouthWest and Delta is absurdly useful. On SouthWest they gave me a companion pass, so any time I fly somewhere, my wife comes with me for free. For a consultant, usually flying every week Monday-Thursday, this let me skip a couple weekends from the rat race, since if my wife is there, why go home anyway.

On Delta, I can fly standby on any flight the same day. It's so handy I got in the habit of just booking the last flight of the day and just come to the airport whenever I feel like it. Even when I don't do that, I often land at airports early enough to hop an earlier connection than my official one, and I end up getting home half a day earlier than expected since I can standby on normally not permitted connections (airline regulations require a certain amount of time to make your connection, but if you can walk up to any gate and ask to standby, a lot more connections are available).

And of course there are the free upgrades to first and free extra legroom seats people normally have to pay for and the free flights using earned miles.

The only perk I need: my wife and I get round trip tickets anywhere in the CONUS once a year. That's a vacation half paid for already.

Man, United is so bad flying them should be against the Geneva Convention.

Last year I flew to Japan on an United flight, and for the first time in my life I felt more like livestock being handled than an actual human being.

Maybe Google figured it out from the activity your link provided in the last 8 hours, but when I click on [1], the top result is [0], and there is a prompt asking if I meant "united.com".

The main perk is not getting bumped off an overbooked flight. I have to say I share your hatred of United, but I hate American more ever since they put me on the SSSS list [1] for having a round the world ticket. Morons - don’t they know the world is flat.

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secondary_Security_Screening_S...

I've been Executive Platinum (top published tier) on AA since the merger (came in as Chairman's Preferred with US Airways).

AA similarly has a "secret" invite-only level above that -- Concierge Key -- and rumors about how they decide who to invite into it (not so secretive: people who spend lots of money, and probably people who have influence over the travel contracts of large companies). Never been a CK, likely never will be. The game was interesting for a while, but now I just have a harder time caring.

Personally I look at it as a cyclic thing. When the economy's in the tubes, airlines lavish benefits on frequent business travelers because the rest of the country isn't flying. When the economy picks up again and people start buying flights to Disney for their vacations again, the benefits get slashed.

Right now we're in a slash/devalue period. Last year I "only" put a bit over 50k miles to AA, which will drop me to Platinum with them at the end of the month when 2015 status expires, picked up Platinum on Delta as a hedge, and went on a spending spree using up my system-wide upgrades. Flew myself in business class to Europe and back multiple times, flew myself and someone else to Hawaii in first, gave a co-worker a business-class upgrade on JFK-SFO, etc.

Irony is, of course, that last month I moved and now work in SF, and UA is the only one of the big three I don't have some kind of useful status with. But living near where I work also means less need to travel, so I'll probably just buy tickets by schedule/price from here on out. DL in particular is nice about cheap first-class fares since they want to fill the front cabin with people who paid rather than people using frequent-flyer perks.

You can contact most airlines and do what is called a "status match." Basically, you say that you have top status on some other airline and would like to switch to United, would they match you? If you haven't done it before, they'll typically offer a challenge (we'll give you gold and if you fly X amount over Y period you get platinum).

United probably spends a good deal of money on SEO to prevent United from matching Untied. I've worked for a company that spent a great deal of marketing time/energy to hide a similar type of search result on a news article and its comments section.

It works fine for me though, so maybe it's based on your location or something

http://i.imgur.com/IOAPSfS.jpg

    > By the way, why does Google NOT provide this link when I
    > search for "Untied"? [1]

Top result for me. Maybe you visit united.com a lot (I maybe never have, I'm in the UK) so Google assumes you meant "United"?

Google shows untied.com as the first result for me:

http://i.imgur.com/IOAPSfS.jpg

I get untied.ca. That honestly debunks that Google thinks this is an irrelevant use of the word untied.

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