So it's my understanding that beginning March 1 you will earn miles based on ticket price, not miles flown. Does anyone know how this will be applied to flights on Star Alliance partner airlines? If I bought a ticket through Singapore Airlines, but used my United MileagePlus account number, will I earn miles based on distance flown or price of the ticket?

http://www.united.com/CMS/en-US/Marketing/CustComm/Promotions/Pages/AirlinePartners.aspx?itemid=304

You have to look at individual airlines for each case. It appears it's getting much worse for discount and deep discount economy.

Also, good reference on FlyerTalk here.

Thanks. It seems that I will only receive 50% of the miles on the Singapore airlines flight as it is a "Class W" ticket. I guess I am done trying to be loyal to United. Unless you can afford to fly Business Class everywhere, they are making it impossible to accumulate miles. I'm just going to go with whatever the cheapest ticket is from now on. Screw 'em.

I think the problem is that they make it so easy to accrue miles with credit cards that they have no choice than to de-value the miles or be stuck giving away tons of $$$ every year.

If you are elite on united, you actually may get more points (miles) per flight.

I've moved all my flights over to American. It's a slight inconvenience as I'm based out of Houston but so far it hasn't been too bad. I did a challenge with them to get platinum for the year and hopefully they don't blow up their program in 2016 like United and Delta have.

I'm predicting American will add a revenue component to status qualification but not switch to the dollars=miles earning method.

The way you earn status on United is still based on miles flown - so you may not get as many reward miles, you're still going to get benefits if you hit their statuses. And with better status, you get a better reward miles multiplier.

I think it will weigh itself out for me, I will get less rewards miles for cheap domestic trips but then I can get like 70,000 on one business class trip to Japan or Singapore....

Think it plays to my benefit but we'll see. I fly to places like midland and okc monthly. They are short flights but typically pretty pricey.

You are who it will benefit most.

Well, I think this is good for me, as Hou-Tampa is our most frequent trip (in-laws; 4-5 times a year) and happens to be one of the most expensive domestic flights.

Too bad you can't find anything but 25,000 each way flights using points. Used to be tons of options at the 12,500 level.