2024 - Stephan Segraves

Saying goodbye to United

November 14, 2024 ssegraves

I recently wrote about United Airlines increasing the spend and flight requirements for every status level in their MileagePlus frequent flyer program. The changes bring them in line with the monetary requirements as their equivalent Delta Medallion statuses, the one difference being that Delta does not require a certain number of flights in exchange for lower spend.

My take on the changes is that United is definitely trying to push people to spend on their credit cards, even upping the number of elite points you can earn from that spend. They are also looking to get a little bit more spend from those frequent flyers who were right on the cusp of earning the next highest status. Lastly, they are trying to “thin the herd” of frequent flyers a tad bit, though I think this isn’t as much of a motivator as some make it out to be. If you want to hear more about the motivations of United, you can listen to a recent episode of Dots, Lines, and Destinations where we had Ed Pizzarello on as a guest to talk about United’s elite status requirement increases.

From the title, you can probably guess where this is going. This year I made it to United’s Platinum status and could probably push it to make it to 1K for 2025, but requalifying next year for 1K with the new requirements would be close to impossible. I am a lifetime Gold with United after flying over 1 million miles on them (and Continental) and so I will have those benefits no matter what. If I really wanted to spend a lot of time on airplanes over the next year, I could shoot for 3 million miles (I need about 1.3 million more) and get lifetime 1K but I think I value my sanity too much to even attempt that.

So, going forward I am not going to prioritize United in my travel plans. I’ll look at schedules and price and make a decision based solely on that. When possible I am going to lean toward flying Alaska Airlines or their oneworld alliance partners. If United comes up cheaper and/or with a better schedule, I will still consider them but I just can’t justify going out of my way to fly them.

This isn’t an easy decision, I love Star Alliance and the number of options they have around the world. I love that United does offer a really cool upgrade option PlusPoints, even if it has been difficult to use them on long haul international routes. I love that United has been adding lots of new destinations. I love that the 1K phone line actually gets you to the front of the queue. That’s what makes it hard to just go fly someone else.

Here’s the math I have been pondering. I used to fly Portland-Newark every week for about 30 weeks a year. Looking at average prices it was around $500-$600 roundtrip. Taking the high end of that, it was about $18,000 in spend and 60 flights. That used to qualify me for 1K. Next year I would need to spend an additional $10,000 to qualify for 1K. And I don’t travel nearly that much anymore, but I do quite a bit of long haul international travel that is fairly expensive and I still didn’t make 1K this year and don’t really want to give United the few thousand dollars it would take to make it.

There is also the question of where the airlines think they are economically and just how long the post-Covid travel boom will last. If in the next year travel were to slow, they could easily adjust their requirements or give bonuses to help people qualify that otherwise wouldn’t, but I can’t be the only frequent flyer who doesn’t live in a hub looking at these changes and questioning which airline I spend my money with and why.

What do you think? Am I making a rash decision? Should I stick with United for another year?

United increases 2025-2026 elite status requirements

October 29, 2024 ssegraves

United released their 2025 requirements for 2026 MileagePlus elite status and it’s not great news. I’ve put two tables with the 2024 requirements and the new 2025 requirements below. For reference, PQF is Premier Qualifying Flights and PQP is Premier Qualifying Points or dollars spent. For every dollar spent on airfare with United you earn 1 PQP.

Year	Premier Silver	Premier Gold	Premier Platinum	Premier 1K
2024	12 PQF and 4,000 PQP or 5,000 PQP	24 PQF and 8,000 PQP or 10,000 PQP	36 PQF and 12,000 PQP or 15,000 PQP	54 PQF and 18,000 PQP or 24,000 PQP
2025	15 PQF and 5,000 PQP or 6,000 PQP	30 PQF and 10,000 PQP or 12,000 PQP	45 PQF and 15,000 PQP or 18,000 PQP	60 PQF and 22,000 PQP or 28,000 PQP

As you can see, this comes out to 25% increase in PQF and PQP needed to qualify for each status, with some minor differences for specific ones (1K only needs 11% more PQFs with 22% more PQPs).

In an email sent to MileagePlus members, there are the following perks coming for PlusPoints, a currency that once earned, allows flyers to upgrade flights from economy to Premium Economy and Polaris (Business class).

Starting in mid-2025, PlusPoints earned upon achieving the highest tiers of
Premier status will become even more versatile. In addition to using
PlusPoints to request premium seat and cabin upgrades, you’ll soon be able
to redeem PlusPoints for new perks, including:

Premier qualifying points (PQP) or Premier qualifying flights (PQF)

TravelBank cash

Bonus miles

Gifting Premier status to other MileagePlus members

So as PlusPoints are earned next year, you’ll be able to use them in 2026 for these new “perks”. These new options seem to be in response to the general complaint I hear which is that PlusPoint upgrades rarely clear. So elite flyers are earning these points and are then unable to use them which is frustrating and deflates the value. And United would much rather having pay business class passengers in those seats rather than upgrading someone using PlusPoints so they needed a way to give the points value and these perks are what they came up with. The PlusPoints now feel like a second currency, in addition to the existing miles you earn from flying and credit card spend.

Keeping it classy in United Polaris business class.

I have mixed feelings about the increase in qualifying points and flights for their respective statuses. One one hand it feels like United is trying to thin the herd of elites in their ranks. By making it harder to earn each level of status, theoretically there will be fewer elites at each of those levels. But that theory doesn’t match what United has said about the market in general, which is that business travel is way down. So with these changes are they insinuating that leisure travelers are spending so much more that they have to thin that out? If so, that’s insane because it doesn’t match the broader economic picture that everyone is painting; That we’re in an economic slump and people are saving not spending.

United clearly has overcrowding issues at their hubs, especially at Newark and San Francisco. Just go browse Threads or Twitter and you will see people complaining that their San Francisco-Newark pre-boarding call for 1Ks, who get early boarding before Group 1, was half of the plane. These are fortress hubs for United with limited competition so lots of elites are expected but with these latest requirement changes, they make it just a little harder for those flyers to earn status. Maybe it knocks that early boarding number down by 5 people per flight. United must have some data to back up their decisions, or they are simply getting very greedy.

What are my plans?

I have my doubts that these increases impact the number of elites at each level but I would love to be proven wrong. I think the spend requirements for 1K, where you get lots of PlusPoints for upgrades and generally more perks, is outrageous and don’t see my travel patterns ever meeting the $22k and 60 flight requirement to qualify. What I struggle with is where to go instead. United’s schedules out of Portland are actually quite good and my cursory searches of other carriers aren’t promising. Delta has similar schedules but they also have similar spend requirements for elite status. Alaska does not have all of the spend requirements but their schedules out of Portland are not great, especially if they don’t fly somewhere non-stop out of here. Because they lack a middle of the country or east coast hub, the connection options are limited to one of their other west coast hubs or via American Airlines and one of their hubs; American’s schedules aren’t much better.

All of this to say, I feel quite stuck. What makes this even more difficult is that I am at 1.5 million lifetime miles on United, guaranteeing lifetime Gold status. If I fly another 1.5 million miles I am guaranteed lifetime 1K. I would love to reach that milestone but just don’t know that I can do that quickly (or cheaply). So, for longhaul work flights, I think I am going to fly the better carriers when I can and credit to Alaska. For domestic travel I am thinking I’ll give preference to United but if they are outrageously priced I’ll consider other carriers. We will see how this plays out in the next few months, I have a few international work trips in the planning stages and I’ll need to make a decision.

Summary

United has raised the qualification requirements for elite status and announced some new things that elites can redeem their PlusPoints for, making up for the fact it is so hard to redeem the PlusPoints for upgrades. The qualification requirements have gone up around 25% for most status levels. If United sees a shift in the economy they can change these requirements or give bonuses and adjust next year.

Qantas giving upgrades to politicians

October 28, 2024 ssegraves

Ben from One Mile at a Time —

According to the book, Australia’s current Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, has received at least 22 free Qantas upgrades from economy class, including some for his family and personal travel. The book claims that Albanese would liaise directly with Joyce for these upgrades. It’s claimed that the requests for these upgrades date back several years, including to when Albanese had the role of Transport Minister.

Ben goes on to discuss whether this even matters.

Am I the only one who feels like we’re splitting hairs here? How about we see an Australian politician actually fight for the people, and make it so that politicians don’t get access to a special lounge, and where it is an issue when politicians get free upgrades? This isn’t how it should be, in my opinion.

To what extent did these factors influence the relationship between politicians and Qantas? I mean, it’s hard to say, though if you ask me, the Australian government has tried to block foreign competitors of Qantas, all while letting the airline operate in a way that simply isn’t in the best interest of the traveling public.

I tend to think it does matter, especially as there was (and still is) quite a bit of controversy over Qantas getting its way as foreign carriers ask for more flights into Australia as part of their bilateral agreements. The Albanese government rejected those requests.

The Guardian’s write-up on the blocking of the flights is quite telling.

“The Government has the opportunity to make some immediate decisions that will put downward pressure on airfares, and improve reliability and competitiveness,” McKenzie said.

She said the decision to refuse Qatar’s request “makes little sense, particularly when we’ve seen the cost of international flights in some cases treble in the last couple of years”. McKenzie claimed allowing it would put “downward pressure on airfares”.

McKenzie said King had provided varying reasons for rejecting the request, including wanting “to help Qantas afford to buy new planes”.

“This government seems to be running a protection racket for a major domestic carrier by refusing to increase competition and freight capacity,” McKenzie said.

Prices into and out of Australia are at all time highs and Qantas is posting record profits. Other carriers are begging to fly more flights and potentially lower fares and those requests are being rejected by a government where the leader is receiving status and upgrades from what you could call the national airline. If it walks like a duck, talks like a duck, and gets upgraded like a duck…

Friday links

October 25, 2024October 28, 2024 ssegraves

Some links this week that I found interesting.

Hawaiian Airlines begins layoffs related to acquisition by Alaska Air (Anchorage Daily News)
64% of Boeing machinists vote to reject company’s latest contract offer, strike continues (KOMO News) – This is definitely not good news. Something has to give and soon.
Bay Area man claims his beloved French bulldog, moved from first class to coach, died from airline’s negligence (SiliconValley.com)
Navy IDs two aviators who died in EA-18G Growler crash last week (Navy Times)

United’s 2025 route announcement

October 12, 2024October 14, 2024 ssegraves

The Announcement

On October 10, United Airlines announced eight new destinations and a few other new routes. I had predicted, because of my own selfish desire that United fly the routes, San Francisco-Hanoi and San Francisco-Bangkok as well as Newark-Palermo. The only one I predicted accurately was Newark-Palermo. The full list of new destinations are:

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia – United will serve Ulaanbaatar from Tokyo-Narita on a 737 starting May 1, 2025.
Kaohsiung, Taiwan – United will serve this southern Taiwan destination from Tokyo-Narita on a 737 starting July 11, 2025.
Dakar, Senegal – This will be flown from Washington-Dulles starting May 23, 2025. I’m guessing this will be flown on a 787-8 but that info is not confirmed yet.
Nuuk, Greenland – From Newark, this route will start on June 14, 2025. The speculation is that this will be flown on a 737 MAX 8, but no confirmation from United yet.
Palermo, Italy – United will fly to this destination from Newark and the route will start on May 21, 2025. This route was originally planned for summer of 2020 but the Covid lockdowns prevented it from happening. The route will be operated by a 767-400ER.
Bilbao, Spain – Starting May 31, 2025, United will fly to Bilbao out of Newark. United didn’t state what plane they will be flying on the route but my guess would be a 767-300ER or a 757-200.
Madeira Island, Portugal – United will operate a 3-times weekly flight to the Portuguese island out of Newark. This is another route that might be operated by a 737 MAX 8, but we don’t yet know for sure.
Faro, Portugal – This Portuguese beach destination will start out of Newark four times a week on May 16. This is another flight I think could be a 757-200.

A few other items were announced as well, including year-round service from Tokyo-Narita to Palau. This service is in addition to the flights on United between Palau and Manila and Palau and Guam. There will also be a new daily flight between Houston and Puerto Escondido, Mexico on an Embraer E-175. San Francisco will see a new service to San Jose, Costa Rica once daily. And lastly, United will fly Washington-Dulles to Venice, Italy and Nice, France in summer of 2025 in addition to the Newark flights to those destinations.

My Thoughts

It is nice that United is adding some new routes and I think a few of them really stand out. Their announcement in summary was, “people are bored going to Rome” and that sentiment doesn’t necessarily sit well with me. Yes, people want new destinations and there are travelers who want to go to these new destinations but I wouldn’t define most of what they announced as popular tourist destination.

The exciting routes to me are Nuuk, Ulaanbaatar, and Palermo, with Palermo being interesting because it is in Sicily and directly competes with Delta’s newly announced route to Catania. The most exciting to me is Ulaanbaatar; I would love to visit Mongolia and spend some time on steppe exploring. It is not an easy place to reach on Star Alliance with transit of China, South Korea, or Turkey being the only way to get there until this United flight starts.

Seth recently visited Greenland on the new Air Greenland service to Canada and I think he raises some very practical questions on the ability of Greenland to handle a large influx of tourists. The route is super cool though and I do hope to experience it and explore Greenland.

I am sure Bilbao, Spain will perform well for United but I do wonder what United will run the route on. The runway at Bilbao is 8,500 feet and surrounded by hills and mountains so it will need to be a performant aircraft, making me lean toward a 757-200.

Faro, Portugal makes some sense because of the large Portuguese population in New Jersey and Faro being a well regarded beach/coastal locale.

The Kaohsiung route is an interesting addition out of Tokyo. My understanding is that there is a ton of demand to Taiwan and this is another option where United can route traffic to the country on their metal with a single stop in Japan. With slots at Narita fairly easy to come by I could see United continuing to explore options out of the airport to tertiary cities in Asia.

Overall I was relatively unimpressed by the announcement. It almost feels like United hired a British stag/hen party planner and just went with whatever destinations they recommended. Maybe folks really want to go to places on the Mediterranean for the Instagram novelty but that doesn’t excite me very much. We’ll have to see how the routes perform, especially as year-over-year travel numbers start to decline.

How long until we’re all on Ozempic?

October 11, 2024October 11, 2024 ssegraves

From Asterisk Magazine —

GLP-1 medications¹ like Ozempic appear to be that drug. Estimates suggest GLP-1s can reduce body weight by at least 15% when taken regularly — and perhaps even more as newer drugs come to market. And though evidence is still being gathered, they may have benefits beyond weight loss: potentially curbing drinking, treating sleep apnea, and reducing risk of stroke. They’ve been called, in many places, a miracle drug, and as such, the category is poised for massive growth. Gallup estimated that 15.5 million Americans have tried them, and half as many are currently using them.

My forecast predicts that the supply of GLP-1s will increase from eight million patient-years to roughly enough for approximately 23 million Americans by 2030. Still, this is only enough supply for about 15% of the 147 million Americans with diabetes or obesity.

Wild. There is definitely some value to these drugs but at what cost over natural measures? For some, I’m sure Ozempic represents a miracle but it’s also a drug that doctors and researchers are still experimenting with and trying to fully understand.

Exploring the new terminal at PDX

August 5, 2024August 6, 2024 ssegraves

This past weekend I had the opportunity to participate in Portland International Airport’s “dress rehearsal” for the opening of the newly built main terminal building. The building has been under construction since early 2021 and with this phase, a big portion of the airport will reopen, reducing a lot of the check-in desk congestion that is present today. The dress rehearsal was to help the airport, the airlines, and TSA make sure that things were operating as expected and to work out any major hiccups before the terminal officially opens on August 14. I believe over 1,000 participants signed up.

All participants had to register before entering the space and this process was a bit painful as it meant waiting in the parking garage in a very long line. The bottleneck seemed to be that they were doing a quick orientation of around 75 people before releasing them into the terminal. To me, this seemed problematic from a realism perspective as the waves of people during the morning rush can be well into the 200-300. Each person received a script that let them know what airline they were flying, whether or not they were checking bags, the security line they needed to go through (PreCheck, express, or regular), and how they were checking in (app or website, kiosk, or with an agent).

The Nitty Gritty

The terminal is beautiful, no doubt about it. On the right in this photo is the temporary wall that blocks the current check-in area from the new space. Then there are the new check-in areas. They are long open areas giving plenty of space for travelers to maneuver, even if an airline’s queues are long. Then you reach the wooden floor and a large opening in the ceiling letting a ton of natural light fill the space.

The wooden floors lead to a tiled space and here you are facing west. There are stadium seats (more on that later) that face the area where passengers will exit the secure area after their flights. In the next picture the security checkpoints are to the right and left of the center of the photo.

The security checkpoints are where some of my qualms with the design start to become apparent. Each security lane, or spot where there is a body scanner, has three places where passengers can line up to fill the plastic bins with their luggage, shoes, toiletries, etc. This is marked with the lane number and a letter (5A/B/C in the next photo), but there is zero explanation of what this means. As you can see, people were kind of bunching up. This will speed up people going through the I.D. check but will probably cause some frustration as people try to jockey for the next open bin space. I’m not sure how to solve it but I brought it to the airport staff’s attention as well as the TSA’s, so maybe they’ll come up with something in the next couple of weeks.

After you go through security you are in a new atrium area that will lead to the old terminal hallways, so no big changes there.

But, the good news for travelers is that the secure connector hallway between B/C and D/E terminals will reopen when the terminal reopens! This will be a huge help to passengers who are connecting between some of the airlines that interline and codeshare out of PDX. The downside is that this hallway is now contains the singular exit for all passengers. I’ve been told this is temporary until phase II of the airport is completed, so hopefully that is true. The other downside is that the connector hallway no longer has moving walkways nor the chairs that it used to have. If I had a flight delay I would typically grab a coffee, sit in those chairs, and enjoy the views of the airport operations. My guess is that the hallway is too narrow now and putting chairs in would just impede traffic.

Now, back to those stadium seats. These seats face the single terminal exit. There is going to be a lot of traffic around this area with people waiting for their friends and family to arrive. I’m sure Loyal Legion will do great business but do you notice that glass partition between the booth and the area above the terminal exit? It’s definitely not high enough to prevent a child (or adult) from tossing things down onto the heads of people exiting after their flight.

I also don’t love the lack of backs on the seating in the area but it is an improvement to the current waiting areas for families, which is essentially 5-6 seats at each of the two exits.

Overall the space is a huge improvement. The amount of natural light alone is a massive upgrade to what the old check-in area, security checkpoints, and waiting area were like. This new pre-security departure hall offers lots of open space for passengers and passenger’s family/friends to wait. And the concessions and stores that disappeared during the construction, we’re getting those back and some new ones, like Loyal Legion, outside of security that everyone can enjoy. What do you think of the new terminal?

AT&T’s huge data breach

July 15, 2024July 15, 2024 ssegraves

From TechCrunch —

U.S. phone giant AT&T confirmed Friday it will begin notifying millions of consumers about a fresh data breach that allowed cybercriminals to steal the phone records of “nearly all” of its customers, a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.

Some of the stolen records include cell site identification numbers associated with phone calls and text messages, information that can be used to determine the approximate location of where a call was made or text message sent.

In all, the phone giant said it will notify around 110 million AT&T customers of the data breach, company spokesperson Andrea Huguely told TechCrunch.

It seems like Snowflake, a cloud based data analytics company, is the likely source of the breach. These types of breaches are becoming more and more common, with third parties who offer some sort of service, have poor or unchecked security practices. If you are an AT&T customer just keep an eye on your account and consider changing your password or passcode.

Delta dropping Portland-Amsterdam, KLM picking it up

June 26, 2024June 26, 2024 ssegraves

From KLM —

Starting from October 27, KLM will fly three times a week on Tuesday, Friday and Sunday between Schiphol and Portland in winter. In summer 2025, KLM will fly five times a week on Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday between Schiphol and Portland. The flights are operated by the Boeing 787-9 and offer 30 seats in World Business Class, 21 seats in Premium Comfort Class, and 224 seats in Economy Class.

It isn’t outright stated in the release but this service replaces Delta’s daily A330 service between Portland and Amsterdam. This is overall a large reduction in seats on the route, especially since it will no longer be daily in the summer.

This route originates from Northwest’s old route network which Delta continued for a little while and then slowly started shrinking over time. Delta has operated it as a “scissor” route, meaning the flight would fly Portland-Amsterdam-Detroit so that the plane could rotate through a Delta hub for maintenance. The return flight to Portland would operate in a similar fashion. This probably created a small amount of planning headaches, but Delta had been doing it for years.

Because Delta has a joint-venture with KLM/Air France, KLM flying the route will still earn Delta cash and they can connect some traffic through PDX, though I think that will be rare. KLM will operate a more fuel efficient plane, the Boeing 787-9, reducing costs on the route.

At the same time, I think it’s a downgrade for Portlanders both because of the reduction in schedule and because of the plane change. In economy Delta operates the A330 with 2-4-2 seating while KLM’s 787-9s operate with 3-3-3 seating. For a couple traveling together, those 2 seats by the window are a great option. The reduction in service is disappointing but maybe KLM will up the summer flying after selling the route for a while and seeing how well (or not well) it is doing. Of course the news release doesn’t acknowledge the reduction but in my opinion it should.

It does make me wonder about the future of Delta’s base at PDX. It feels like they are so focused on making Seattle work that they’ll reduce other west coast flying in pursuit of that goal. There have been rumors of Delta trying to get a Portland-Seoul route operating but I am very skeptical of that happening.

One little side note, at the bottom of the KLM press release it states:

Portland is the capital of the state of Oregon.

Portland is not the state capital of Oregon.