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Comment by outericky | Hacker News Reader

Paid in United miles? Not really an incentive there.

Not only that, but: "Award miles offered under this Program are not Premier® qualifying miles." So you don't even get the free checked bag and priority check-in that those miles would otherwise entitle you to.

United's checked bag fees don't actually matter since you'll most likely be refunded as their standard operating procedure is to delay your bag for a week if they can ship freight instead.

Agreed. They should be award miles that allow for PQM accrual. Or make them all PQM. That way someone could get gold for life (plus spouse) for a code execution exploit.

Even if you got the PQMs, you'd still need the dollars to get the status. So it's not that helpful, is it?

But the top prize is one million miles, which would get you lifetime status. Delta and United don't (yet) have spend requirements for lifetime status, AFAIK.

Conferring lifetime status isn't necessarily even that expensive to the airline--you only get the benefits after you give the airline your money for tickets. It also creates an incentives to buy tickets on one particular airline, even when they might be slightly more expensive (which is the whole purpose of frequent flier CRM programs).

Yep, exactly. If they were 1mil PQM or 1mil BIS you'd hit million miler and get gold for life. Gold, which only kicks in when you actually fly (like you pointed out).

I fly United about 70 times per year. I use them all the time. And yet, understanding the myriad of acronyms is just plainly annoying. Also, their program is getting worse year after year, including arbitrary inflation of your miles in the order of 50-70% each 18-24 months.

And United just limited how you can use reward miles. It used to be that your status would pass on too the passenger. So I'd fly my mom or sister, and they'd get checked bags, lounge, priority access, etc.

Now they no longer do that. So it makes the miles far less useful. And, since it doesn't apply to GS, all the other premiers still get screwed by this change. So it's not like it's gonna improve premier status for the rest of us anyways.

Ranty anecdote: Oh and they don't even respect what their ticketing and policies on this state. It was that any such ticket booked before 15 Apr would use the old rules, and indeed the baggage calculator would show that. Sent my sister somewhere, counting on some big bags to bring equipment. GA starts making a fuss, saying no, made her unpack and so on. Even after calling United and being assured she'd be treated properly on the return flight, nope, still not handled correctly and made to pay extra. United's IT is terrible. That's why we call their site ".bomb".

I see you're familiar with flying United :)

I appears someone still flied United. Who knew.

And, a farcically low payout for otherwise very expensive consulting work from highly skilled people.

Compared to other bug bounties it isn't bad at all. Airline miles are generally valued at around a penny a mile, so $500 for XSS, $2500 for an auth bypass, $10000 for code exec isn't all that bad.

A thing that people who have never run bug bounties before: Many of your submissions come from overseas. If your submitters can't profit, they won't submit.

UA needs to get their shit together.

Robert Crandall claimed that "no airline has ever made back its cost in capital."

(quotes as delimiters; I can't find the exact quote )

Yeah and who would ever want to use United for international anyways?

Don't United miles also expire.

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