Originally Posted by
geodork
We might be able to pay for the flight in 2 weeks, so that would give us time to get the 50k United card.
I seem to recall that some airline card I applied for gave me a temporary card number upon authorization which was only good for booking flights with that airline. But that would seem to be enough for you. So you may want to research whether the Chase UA card provides that benefit. (Sorry, I was unable to use that temporary account number and so I can't remember for sure which card for which airline it was, but I did apply for a UA card last year so it
might have been that.)