Flying United's unfriendly skies: Is airline loyalty a sucker bet?

My wife and I used to fly United Airlines a lot. For many years our status was Premier Executive. We accumulated a huge quantity of frequent-flyer miles. We liked the people who worked for United, and we enjoyed giving them our business.

That all changed yesterday.

A few months ago I used a big chunk of United Mileage Plus points to buy three tickets from San Diego to New York for a family trip in April. I had to pay extra miles to get the dates I needed. I picked out some decent seats, and expected my trip to go well.

Then United sent an e-mail saying something had changed. I went to United.com and checked my itinerary. It showed a one-hour shift in one segment, both outbound and returning. Not a problem, the schedule still worked.

But I also noticed our seats had changed. So we called United, and learned that the aircraft was different, so they had moved us from decent seats to bad seats -- seats that don't recline because they are in front of the over-wing exits.

We asked to be moved, and United said we must PAY to get reclining seats. But we already HAD reclining seats, and only lost them because United changed aircraft after we bought the tickets and selected our seats. Why must WE pay to address a situation created solely by United for its own benefit? The answer: We are using "free" tickets so we get the worst seats.

FREE tickets? They were bought and paid for via the many flights and purchases through which we accumulated the miles. They weren't free, they were part of the original transactions. Moreover, to accumulate the number of miles required to purchase our three tickets, obviously we were very good United customers for a long time. No one "gave" us the miles, we earned them by accepting an offer from United to earn future flights by being a loyal customer who took many trips with United.

Now, apparently United Airlines has decided that past loyalty and customer promises don't matter. United seems to believe that using their own United Mileage Plus currency -- miles we bought per United's offerings -- makes us undesirable. Nothing in business is free; the cost to United of the miles it awarded was built into the fares it charged us to earn the miles, and the benefit was, we flew United. United Airlines long-ago got our money, but now it's acting like we are trying to get something for nothing. Shame!

OK, we'll be uncomfortable for a dozen hours in our "free" seats, but we'll survive. But will United? It has erased any chance we will once again become loyal customers.

Based on this and other bad United employee experiences (I guess they laid off all the good employees), we've switched to Delta Airlines. From San Diego, Delta is often less convenient for us, but Delta people seem to actually want customers to be satisfied. Both companies got sick and sought bankruptcy protection, but only Delta deserves to get well.

Aviation industry experts keep saying there are too many airlines. I know one that won't be missed.