Scott Duke Kominers, Columnist

United’s Frequent-Flier Program Gets Some Game Theory

The change is a case study in marketplace design.

December 13, 2019 at 3:30 PM UTC

Scott Duke Kominers is the MBA Class of 1960 Associate Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School and a faculty affiliate of the Harvard University department of economics.

Got game?
Photographer: Daniel Slim/AFP/Getty Images

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The big news last week out of United Airlines was that the company's longtime chief executive officer, Oscar Munoz, will step down in May. But many of the company's most loyal customers were focused on a different transition: On Dec. 4, United made the most substantial changes to its frequent-flier upgrade program in years.1

Flight upgrades are mostly a problem of the 1% (or those who amass way too many frequent-flier miles). Even so, they can serve as a great case study of how marketplace design works.