UA Deals out of DCA (preferred) or IAD?
Sep 7, 2014, 11:56 am
#91
Join Date: Mar 2014
Posts: 6
Halfway home, DCA>SIN>DCA mileage run
Glad to hear it! I'm getting pretty excited even though it's a ways away. If I pick up any tips I'll try to share them with you since I'm about a month before you.
For anyone else, there are still plenty of dates with this deal and lots of different routing options both domestically (IAH, EWR, SFO, ORD, LAX, etc.) and internationally (HKG, NRT, etc.).
For anyone else, there are still plenty of dates with this deal and lots of different routing options both domestically (IAH, EWR, SFO, ORD, LAX, etc.) and internationally (HKG, NRT, etc.).
The only bummer on the trip so far has been the lack of upgrade on my 14h15m flight from SFO to HKG. It was my first and possibly only flight on a 747 and I was really hoping to try out the upper deck. I also had my first experience on a 787 and lucked out with an upgrade after I already boarded. Boy those windows are neat!
I same-day-changed (SDC'd) my DCA to IAH flight and IAH to SFO flight to get to IAH on Friday evening (instead of Saturday) and hop on the early morning 787 from IAH to SFO on Saturday. It worked out well, I met up with some friends in Houston for dinner, but I had to sleep at the airport. I took my first airport lounge shower (IAH) and was quite impressed.
For the rest of my legs, I'm upgraded to BusinessFirst or First so it should be smooth flying from here on out. I'll be 1k for the first time when the miles hit my account, I'm pretty excited!
Sep 25, 2014, 7:11 pm
#92
Join Date: Oct 2004
Location: Washington, DC
Programs: UA -1MM, SPG - Lifetime Gold
Posts: 197
I'm halfway through my DCA to SIN to DCA mileage run and it has been better than I expected! I'm sitting in the Singapore Airlines SilverKris business class lounge right now in Singapore before I head home on my last four flights (SIN>NRT>IAH>EWR>DCA).
The only bummer on the trip so far has been the lack of upgrade on my 14h15m flight from SFO to HKG. It was my first and possibly only flight on a 747 and I was really hoping to try out the upper deck. I also had my first experience on a 787 and lucked out with an upgrade after I already boarded. Boy those windows are neat!
I same-day-changed (SDC'd) my DCA to IAH flight and IAH to SFO flight to get to IAH on Friday evening (instead of Saturday) and hop on the early morning 787 from IAH to SFO on Saturday. It worked out well, I met up with some friends in Houston for dinner, but I had to sleep at the airport. I took my first airport lounge shower (IAH) and was quite impressed.
For the rest of my legs, I'm upgraded to BusinessFirst or First so it should be smooth flying from here on out. I'll be 1k for the first time when the miles hit my account, I'm pretty excited!
The only bummer on the trip so far has been the lack of upgrade on my 14h15m flight from SFO to HKG. It was my first and possibly only flight on a 747 and I was really hoping to try out the upper deck. I also had my first experience on a 787 and lucked out with an upgrade after I already boarded. Boy those windows are neat!
I same-day-changed (SDC'd) my DCA to IAH flight and IAH to SFO flight to get to IAH on Friday evening (instead of Saturday) and hop on the early morning 787 from IAH to SFO on Saturday. It worked out well, I met up with some friends in Houston for dinner, but I had to sleep at the airport. I took my first airport lounge shower (IAH) and was quite impressed.
For the rest of my legs, I'm upgraded to BusinessFirst or First so it should be smooth flying from here on out. I'll be 1k for the first time when the miles hit my account, I'm pretty excited!
Last weekend I did a IAD-PTY-LIM-CUZ-LIM-PTY-IAD MR with no stops and two four-hour layovers basically with no sleep. I'm doing the same trip again this weekend. So I actually think the DCA-SIN trip will be a breeze in comparison!
Oct 13, 2014, 8:50 am
#93
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: Cairo
Programs: Hyatt: Diamond; SPG: Gold; UA Platinum; BA Silver; EK Silver
Posts: 244
Any suggestions for November 3?
I will be in the DCA area that week and am interested in doing a day run on Monday November 3. I am 10,000 miles short of my *G re-qualification (no chance of making Plat this year), so am looking to get as many miles as I can on this one day. Any suggestions on what would be the best routing I could get? BWI-SFO-SEA-SFO-BWI was suggested up-thread, so anything similar would be great. Thanks.
Oct 14, 2014, 1:02 pm
#94
Original Poster
Join Date: Sep 2013
Posts: 22
Just finished my DCA-SFO-NRT-SIN-HKG-SFO-IAD mileage run this past weekend. Left on Friday morning and returned on Sunday at 6:30 pm. Everything went smoothly. Kept my body on DC time (easy to do since planes were kept dark).
Thanks to everyone for the assistance.
Thanks to everyone for the assistance.
Oct 15, 2014, 6:14 pm
#95
Join Date: May 2012
Location: ORF, RIC
Programs: UA LT 1K, 3 MM; Marriott Titanium; IHG Platinum
Posts: 6,940
Here is one MR idea for DC based flyers if you do not 20K miles.
Immediately turn at POS is available. For Nov. 21-22, DCA-EWR-IAH-POS-EWR-IAH-DCA, 9286 miles for $361.70 or 3.895 cpm. For Dec. 5-6, DCA-IAH-EWR-POS-IAH-DCA, 8594 miles for $350.10 or 4.074 cpm. If you want to stay at POS for a day or two, you may find better flight options.
Good travels.
Immediately turn at POS is available. For Nov. 21-22, DCA-EWR-IAH-POS-EWR-IAH-DCA, 9286 miles for $361.70 or 3.895 cpm. For Dec. 5-6, DCA-IAH-EWR-POS-IAH-DCA, 8594 miles for $350.10 or 4.074 cpm. If you want to stay at POS for a day or two, you may find better flight options.
Good travels.
Nov 1, 2014, 2:51 pm
#97
Join Date: Jun 2013
Posts: 531
Just finished my first ever mileage/segment run. IAD-EWR-BDL-EWR-DCA(not!) No one told me beforehand that actual running was required for these things. Mini trip report to follow:
A comedy of errors**** on my first flight of the morning led to a tense connection at Newark, turning a scheduled 40 minute connection to a 13 minute one (officially). Actually we arrived at the gate at Newark only three minutes before boarding was supposed to close for the flight to Hartford... quite some distance away. We weren’t allowed to deplane immediately also. I sprinted the entire distance from the 111x basement gate cluster to the 85x basement gate cluster… and just as I got down the stairs I heard the final boarding call for Hartford. I was quite winded by this point and felt a little nauseous. Maybe I’m just out of shape, or not used to sprinting that distance with no warm-up while wearing a backpack and having woken up at 3:30am.
The short hop to Hartford and back was relaxing and uneventful. On the way back, we flew down at FL50-60 the whole way so there was a nice view. The flight attendant was convinced that I was some sort of smuggler when I made the immediate turn at BDL. While briefly in the BDL concourse, I noticed that my later flight EWR-DCA was delayed by an hour so I tried to get the gate agent and United phone reps to change me/let me fly standby on an earlier EWR-IAD. That would save me a bunch of time getting back to my car, as I was planning to use Metro and either the Rosslyn or Wiehle bus to return to Dulles. They couldn’t make the change, and didn’t understand why I didn’t want to accept a direct BDL-WAS flight as a timely alternative. The second I got back to EWR I checked my phone again and it showed confirmed seat available for the earlier IAD flight. Excellent! 4 segments, total time in airports/air about 10 hours.
****
A comedy of errors**** on my first flight of the morning led to a tense connection at Newark, turning a scheduled 40 minute connection to a 13 minute one (officially). Actually we arrived at the gate at Newark only three minutes before boarding was supposed to close for the flight to Hartford... quite some distance away. We weren’t allowed to deplane immediately also. I sprinted the entire distance from the 111x basement gate cluster to the 85x basement gate cluster… and just as I got down the stairs I heard the final boarding call for Hartford. I was quite winded by this point and felt a little nauseous. Maybe I’m just out of shape, or not used to sprinting that distance with no warm-up while wearing a backpack and having woken up at 3:30am.
The short hop to Hartford and back was relaxing and uneventful. On the way back, we flew down at FL50-60 the whole way so there was a nice view. The flight attendant was convinced that I was some sort of smuggler when I made the immediate turn at BDL. While briefly in the BDL concourse, I noticed that my later flight EWR-DCA was delayed by an hour so I tried to get the gate agent and United phone reps to change me/let me fly standby on an earlier EWR-IAD. That would save me a bunch of time getting back to my car, as I was planning to use Metro and either the Rosslyn or Wiehle bus to return to Dulles. They couldn’t make the change, and didn’t understand why I didn’t want to accept a direct BDL-WAS flight as a timely alternative. The second I got back to EWR I checked my phone again and it showed confirmed seat available for the earlier IAD flight. Excellent! 4 segments, total time in airports/air about 10 hours.
****
- Each member of the 3 person flight crew (Q200) was late. The gate agent kept apologizing, saying this was the time to board but there was no crew. I guess I should’ve anticipated this, as it’s happened to me several times before in life when taking early morning flights after a “festive” holiday such as New Years.
- After we finally boarded, power got cut to the aircraft and the lights went dark, including the emergency lighting. The first officer came out and gave a technical answer to the passengers about the ground power unit either failing or running out of gas and the aircraft has no APU (I don’t think most of the passengers understood what he was talking about). He then started yelling out the door at the ground crew to get a new GPU ASAP, yelling that he had no battery power and could do nothing without it. Eventually they either fixed it or found some gas.
- Once the power was back, they realized the plane was way overweight. They expelled one passenger and started moving as much baggage as possible from the underside to the overhead bins. The first officer again apologized and said that somehow more bags were left on the plane overnight than anticipated (returning lost bags etc), not anticipating a full flight.
- Once we landed at EWR, we had a lengthy wait to deplane because there was another (not in use) Q200 parked at our gate. This was bizarre, we were only ~20 minutes late at this point and the gate had been assigned well ahead of time. How do they end up just parking a plane there? We had to wait for a tug to push it away.
- I consider it a minor miracle that I made my connection given these circumstances. I’m sure a lot of other folks on that flight didn’t make theirs.
Nov 2, 2014, 11:32 am
#98
Join Date: May 2012
Location: ORF, RIC
Programs: UA LT 1K, 3 MM; Marriott Titanium; IHG Platinum
Posts: 6,940
I can guarantee that you will not have to run this hard with this 19,000 miles run. 
BWI-IAH-KWI-BAH-KWI-IAH-BWI (put all six pairs of cities on multiple destination search at united.com) for Sat-Mon. That is, BWI-IAH(Sat), IAH-KWI(Sat), KWI-BAH(Sun), BAH-KWI(Sun), KWI-IAH(Mon) and IAH-BWI(Mon). It is $683 or 3.6 cpm. This fare is also available for this November and early next year. More info can be found at this thread. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milea...iad-690-a.html
BWI-IAH-KWI-BAH-KWI-IAH-BWI (put all six pairs of cities on multiple destination search at united.com) for Sat-Mon. That is, BWI-IAH(Sat), IAH-KWI(Sat), KWI-BAH(Sun), BAH-KWI(Sun), KWI-IAH(Mon) and IAH-BWI(Mon). It is $683 or 3.6 cpm. This fare is also available for this November and early next year. More info can be found at this thread. http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/milea...iad-690-a.html
Dec 5, 2014, 11:18 am
#101
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: IAD/DCA/BWI
Programs: Hyatt Globalist (2020:Exp), United Gold
Posts: 1,525
UA:$384 BWI-SJU (San Juan, PR) 6484PQM
UA:$384 BWI-SJU (San Juan, PR) 6484PQM (5.92cpm)
Sun 14 Dec
UA1411 BWI-IAH 1754-2025
UA1122 IAH-SJU 2359-0615(+1 day)
Mon 15 Dec
UA1131 SJU-IAH 0745-1046
UA1097 IAH-BWI 1304-1703
Dec 31, 2014, 10:26 am
#102
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: IAD/DCA/BWI
Programs: Hyatt Globalist (2020:Exp), United Gold
Posts: 1,525
UA:$107 IAD-DFW 2342PQM 4.53cpm
Not much mileage, but really cheap:
UA:$107 IAD-DFW 2342PQM 4.53cpm NRG21AWS
Sat Feb 14 or 21 or 28
UA3744 IAD-DFW 1245-1515 CR7
UA5090 DFW-IAD 1732-2115 CR7
Available on multiple dates thru Mar 12, including the above 3 weekend dates. Bad news is that it's on CR7...at least the exit row is still available.
Routing rules for NRG21AWS says must be nonstop...has anyone had luck SDC-ing these to a connecting flight? That would definitely improve the CPM (i.e 1x ORD/IAH/EWR=4.1/3.7/3.5cpm)
UA:$107 IAD-DFW 2342PQM 4.53cpm NRG21AWS
Sat Feb 14 or 21 or 28
UA3744 IAD-DFW 1245-1515 CR7
UA5090 DFW-IAD 1732-2115 CR7
Available on multiple dates thru Mar 12, including the above 3 weekend dates. Bad news is that it's on CR7...at least the exit row is still available.
Routing rules for NRG21AWS says must be nonstop...has anyone had luck SDC-ing these to a connecting flight? That would definitely improve the CPM (i.e 1x ORD/IAH/EWR=4.1/3.7/3.5cpm)
Jan 5, 2015, 7:35 pm
#104
Join Date: Nov 2013
Location: IAD/DCA/BWI
Programs: Hyatt Globalist (2020:Exp), United Gold
Posts: 1,525
BWI/DCA-SJU 4cpm
Sat 7 Feb
UA:$334 BWI-SJU 8486PQM 3.9cpm
BWI-IAH-EWR-SJU
SJU-EWR-IAH-BWI
UA:$338 DCA-SJU 8432PQM 4.0cpm
DCA-IAH-EWR-SJU
SJU-EWR-IAH-DCA
The BWI flight wasn't available when I booked, so I'm on the ex-DCA itinerary. So I'm losing 0.1cpm
