RNE

And the unequivocal answer is no. Let's move along.

physioprof

That's the smallest number of PQM offers on a reservation I've ever seen, by far.

LostPanda

I have a newbie question. Do you have to purchase RDM in order to get an offer to buy accelerator PQM? I got confused when I almost bought a dummy ticket to generate an accelerator PQM offer.

There was a step to select yes or no for accelerator reward miles. Am I supposed to click on yes? Then the accelerator PQM offer comes up after a ticket is purchased?

Thanks!

WineCountryUA

yes

yes, yes

hoopics

I've also seen a sharp fall in accelerator prices in the past couple of weeks. Just booked an award ticket to Europe for next summer, and it's offering me accelerator rates for either 11,000 or 9,000 miles of 11.2 CPM for RDM+PQM on that reservation.

This is down from the 20 or so CPM pricing I was seeing last month. Unclear whether it's due to time of year, or because I've now booked my last flight to get me over the hump to platinum for the year. I swear the system has to be monitoring progress towards elite levels, and adjusting pricing accordingly.

RNE

I too think Accelerator PQMs' price can adjust by current PQMs vis-à-vis elite level. I'm just above qualification for Gold with no flights or plans to go any higher. However, if I were sitting at, say, 45k PQM, I suspect my Accelrator price would not have dropped. But, it's also possibly—as I noted up thread—that sales of Accelerator PQMs are down and UA wants to goose them.

JC5280

Just got an email with "discounted" Award Accelerator rates for an upcoming itin. When I click on it, it shows what looks like 2.3 cents per mile for award and 11 cents per mile for award+PQM. I only need about 3000 miles to get to 150k PQM and get more RPUs/GPUs, so I will check prices on shorter itins.

**Our everyday price for purchasing award miles is 3.5 cents/mile with federal excise tax on top. Compare Award Accelerator offer (the prices shown includes federal excise tax) with this rate to calculate the discount you are getting on your offer.

physioprof

That seems pretty cheap right now as year-end approaches. I was getting 10.3 total cpm for RDM+PQM a month or so ago, and now the cheapest is 27.3 total cpm for RDM+PQM.

BuildingMyBento

I bit at the offer to get 6K miles b/c it was roughly 1.8/mile. Also, I now have enough to redeem a one-way award...buying the miles separately would have cost about $80 more.

(Naturally I'm fretting that there was an issue. I bought them yesterday and they still haven't shown up in the account.)

Steve M

My offer was about 1.9 cents/mile for RDMs a couple of weeks ago. I took it and they posted without issue.

Asiatraveler15

I have had them post immediately and sometimes never until I called. Give it a few days then call and give them the UA ref. # from your CC.

JudyBlueEyes

Hello FT community. As of now, I will be 2109 miles short of Gold/50K in 2015. (Earlier this month, I made it as far as Tokyo on a trip that was supposed to include Bali, but volcanic ash closed the Bali airport and resulted in the conference being postponed so I turned around and flew home. Would have had NRT-DPS-NRT miles and no problem for Gold status, if that volcano hadn't messed up that plan.)

On my one remaining trip on United this year, I'm being offered 9000 extra miles for $207/$810. I don't need 9000 and I'm not sure that spending over $1000 is worthwhile. I don't really have time to take a MR this year since I already have trips Dec. 4-9 and 12-27, and commitments that last week of December.

I'm about 17,000 miles from 1 million and thus lifetime Gold, and I expect to have international trips to make that milestone in the first quarter of the year. So am I better off letting Gold lapse, using my Explorer card for early 2016 trips, and getting lifetime Gold with my trips early in the new year? Thanks to this wonderful community, Judy

LaserSailor

Judy - the purchased PQM rate with accelerator (what you need to buy miles that count for status) has historically plummeted each Jan 1, so you definitely should wait. Purchased PQM are at the high demand/high rate right now.

Wait. Merry Christmas!

RNE

More like January 10, actually. But your point is well taken.

JudyBlueEyes

May I ask: do PQM accelerator miles purchased in January count towards status that was supposed to be earned in 2015, for 2016? I thought that the counter went to zero on January 1 but I hope I'm wrong. Judy