Two-factor authentication — too much for United’s best customers.

Account authentication is complicated at United. It is a form of two-factor authitication.

Anyone who’s spent any time in a United Club at an airport or even in a United Airlines boarding area in the past few years knows the drill — someone talking loudly into their phone “Pepperoni, mango, Ford, Chicago. math. ”  And we often smile — it’s a United Mileage Plus member doing their account authentication.

Years ago a four-digit pin sufficed, but apparently that wasn’t secure enough, so United Airlines changed it to a password plus security questions.

Now, this did complicate things, especially when travelers forgot their answers. And it also complicated things for frequent travelers who delegate their travel planning. Two-factor authentication includes things like upgrades and at times free tickets — to either a travel agent, an administrative assistant or a family member. But some of the busiest travelers, especially, just adapted by giving their travel planners the passwords and answers.

Now, United has decided to tighten the rules yet again. A two-factor authentication system where when logging in United has to send a text or an email to do anything in a Mileage Plus traveler’s account, in the app, on a lap-top, or by phone.

And while this might be a minor inconvenience for very occasional travelers and those who book everything on their own, it’s a nightmare for many of United’s most frequent, busiest, and most lucrative  travelers. The text or email HAS to go to the traveler directly, using the phone number and/or email they gave to United to contact them. And it’s valid for five minutes.

Not all frequent travelers have someone help with their travel.

Many travel agents, especially for new clients, avoid booking mileage tickets, even for fees. (Beyond being complicated, with a mileage ticket the airline, not the agency, has control of the ticket.)

Many executives authorize their assistant for their account. In some cases, these assistants do everything from tracking mileage to handling upgrades to checking them for the elite travelers.

Some of my busiest clients who are very frequent travelers have given me their passwords and security questions, as have a few I’ve had for decades who trust me and believe I can make ticket decisions for them.

What it often comes down to is some people are just too busy to deal with “Plus Points” (a type of United upgrade award) and miles on their own. And especially now that redemption rules and number of points keep changing, it’s often confusing. (I recently had a Global Services member traveling with his daughter and a friend to Hawaii. After discussion with United, I was able to do it with a combination of paid tickets, points, and a one free one-way ticket. It took a while, but saved him a great deal of money.)

In other cases, it might be as semi-simple as “do any flights have confirmed upgrades available? Or how many miles will United charge me for this?”

Overall, it’s often the most frequent and often sophisticated fliers who want someone to handle their mileage/upgrade request. 

Not surprisingly, of those clients I have where either I or their assistants take care of the mileage issues, a high percentage of them are Global Services. This is United’s very limited and highest category of frequent flier. While they don’t publish numbers, estimates say there are only a few thousand in the United States, and you need perhaps $75,000 or so in travel a year.

One such client, who travels nonstop, and internationally at least once a month, delegates everything she can to her assistant. Except that now when her assistant tries to upgrade, United sends a text. Not exactly convenient if she’s in a meeting, or worse, in Europe or Asia.

Several clients have complained to me on time changes while traveling, especially.

They ask their assistant to do something with their ticket, and then get that text in the middle of the night. Which means they either miss it, or get woken up, and then may miss the five minute window to get the code back.

And it gets worse if someone just changes a flight — even by an hour — because upgrades using points or miles are attached to the original ticketed flight, and must be re-requested for a change, so the process must be started all over again.

United COULD do an email authentication which travelers could send to their travel planner, but time changes etc. still cause problems, especially since the code sent lasts only five minutes.

As one client wrote to United,”I do not have time to keep up with all your upgrade rules, and I really do NOT have time to play games with codes.”

In another case, a client had a family emergency involving last-minute travel which he did not have time to handle.. He called me, but then got on the phone dealing with time senstivie issues and the codes kept expiring before he could send them to me.

United’s solution is to make your defacto contact information your assistant or agent’s phone or email.

Uh, no, because that means all delays and boarding announcements and ANY communications from the airline would come to us, not the traveler themselves.

Global Services clients are very lucrative for United, and they are insanely busy people. United Airlines has claimed to me on the phone that hackers were getting into accounts with security questions and passwords, though they haven’t actually talked to anyone who has had a problem.

The solution actually seems somewhat simple — allow Mileage Plus members to designate one or two people authorized to work with their accounts, and put THOSE texts or emails also on file. This would not be hard for the airline to do; with a couple clients their Mileage Plus account had already stored my email as an alternate for itineraries and receipts.

But United needs to do something. It’s one thing to raise fees and annoy the people who spend very little or don’t travel much. It’s another to make things harder for your best customers.

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