Greetings All:

I've posted on the United thread several times but this is my first post outside of that thread. I hope I'm in the right thread. Mods, please feel free to relocate this if necessary.

I know this is a few years out, but my wife and I are planning a trip to Australia in Fall 2021. We will be flying out of EWR and flying on UA. One of the reasons we're planning this so far out is that as of now, we need 800,000 UA miles to make the trip in J. ( there are other reasons we are planning this far our as well ) and we need time to save up the miles.

My concern is that our miles will devalue by then. Right now, two J round trips EWR-SYD are in the range of $16,000. At 800,000 miles, that makes our miles worth 2¢ each, which I consider a very good rate for the standard rate.

In United's last devaluation six months ago, they started a minor version of dynamic pricing, but prices aren't a flat miles/dollar and they still have an award chart for the maximum number of miles needed ( EWR-SYD/MEL in J is at the Maximum rate for 325 of the next 330 days ). My fear is that in the next devaluation, they will go to a complete dynamic system based off of the airfare price. Since United tends mimic the success of other airlines, I'm wondering how other airlines price their award flights. Is it strictly Miles/Dollar, or do premium cabins have a higher or lower redemption rate? Also if anyone has any numbers to throw out, I would enjoy seeing them. If UA decided to go to say 1.6 or even 1.8¢/mi valuation, this could delay the trip for several years, only leaving time for another devaluation.

I searched on DL and AAs sites and they still have award charts like UA does, so I'm not too worried yet.

While my inquiries are UA related, this can be an open discussion about Dynamic Pricing and Devaluations in general.