To fastair
Hey fastair,
I have never used the hidden city trick because I always have to carry over 200 lbs of baggage for my business (which is one of great perks of being *Gold), but I do book open jawed itineraries to Asia because of United stopover rules and then fill in the gap, with either an award flight or another purchased nested itinerary, and cancel the final segment. Sometimes I can pick-up the orphan segment at a later date because I am in Asia a lot but sometimes I throw it away. I have been doing this for about 15 years now in Asia and it always saves me at least $1,000- per trip (I value FF miles at 2 cents when I use awards). This trick I found on my own in the 1990's and only recently, after I joined FT, did I see that lots of other people here do the exact same thing.
Is this technically not permitted? The reason I ask is that, back in the days when I booked all of my international travel on the phone with the Premier Exec desk, I used to tell the agents exactly what I was doing and they would help construct the itineraries, so I assumed that it was perfectly fine. But, reading some of these threads since I have joined FT, makes me think that UA may not consider this kosher either.