Originally Posted by
usedtobeimportant
I often take my family along on business.
I typically use miles to book their awards and then pay for mine matching their flights exactly.
But I find two things happen:
a) The award tickets are not so great (i.e. not non-stop, early/late flights etc.)
b) The price of these not so great tickets is ironically really large!
Did anyone else find this pattern?
Lately, I've noticed that after a flight slips/transitions off the award list the price to purchase it drops greatly.
For example, I booked red eye award tickets SFO to IAD for 12.5k miles but they cost $400 to purchase at the time.
Today I found the same tickets are now $200 but they now cost 24K miles!
Did anyone else find this pattern of United increasing/dropping paid ticket prices to match award inventory?
I think most people here would agree that the best value for reward redemption is saver premium cabin reward. Economy class purchase price fluctuates widely based on market demand and competition. And more often than not, you will see very cheap economy class that do not justify miles redemption.