Changes to MileagePlus Award and Upgrade Policies - Eff. 3-Feb-2014

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Hi everyone,

I wanted to give you a heads up about some changes we’ll be making to our MileagePlus award chart and upgrade policies. More details, including links to the changes, are listed below.
  • Changes to miles needed for some Saver and Standard Awards, including domestic stopovers (link - PDF p.2)
  • Different premium cabin mileage levels for Star Alliance and MileagePlus partners (link - PDF p.3)
  • Changes to upgrade policy for intra-Asia and northern South America flights (link - see chart)
Changes to the award charts take effect for all award tickets issued on or after February 1, 2014. The upgrade policy changes will not impact any flights taken before February 1, 2014.

As always, I’m here and will do my best to answer any clarifying questions you may have.

Aaron Goldberg
Sr. Manager - Customer Experience Planning
United Airlines
Awesome!!
so ...it seems it is going to toward MileagePlusPesos in the future or should we
change the name to NON PASS again?

This time Delta gives their member notification at least 8-10 months in advance while United gives 3 months....

But thanks to let us know now.
Ouch. US to Asia (ex-Japan) in C went from 120k to 140k 16% increase
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Looks like Mainland to Hawaii awards went up a bit.
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All bad. Split chart for UA versus partners, rates significantly increased and regional int'l flights are screwed.

Lots of gutting going on here.

Craptacular.
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Sorry cant seem to edit above post but also US to europe saver biz went from 50 to 57.5. Geez.
If I want to fly in F to India, it will cost me 140,000 miles. ONE-WAY. Used to be 160K roundtrip. Unbelievable.
Well... that's somewhat upsetting.
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Quote: Ouch. US to Asia (ex-Japan) in C went from 120k to 140k 16% increase
US-EU in biz went from 50k to either 57.5 (UA) or 7 (partner). That last one is a 40% raise.
it's so UNITED .... friendly

let's get rid off our last loyal elites by changing our FRIENDLY MileagePlus policies
Just about everyone I've read about said a United devaluation was coming..
So, if I read this correctly, take for example a LH (or any *A partner for that matter) F award from US-Europe prior to 1FEB is 135k miles - after 1FEB, 220k miles?! Not sure the word inflation even does justice to the new Star Alliance partner redemption category. The next time UA offers up $0 mistake fares, I'm going to hop down off my moral high-horse and grab several dozen.
Increasing co-pays to match inflation makes sense. Increasing the number of RDM required to get an award NEVER makes sense, UNLESS they increase the number of RDM earned per flight to match inflation as well. A flight from SFO to HNL for example, earns the number of miles it earns...regardless of whether you paid $800RT for your ticket in 2014 or $200RT for your ticket in the 1980s. Neglecting continental drift, which can, over time, change the distances between cities (but this would also, by the way, change the prices of the flights), what reason is there to adjust number of RDM required for an award to match inflation? Oh yeah, those annoying things that DO tie RDM to US dollars, the credit cards. The existence of those stupid credit cards is devaluing all of the miles already in our accounts.
110,000 OW for *A F to Europe. That's an increase of 43,500 miles (64%) each way.