jsloan

The official policy slightly favors LH. (Note that the equal-or-lesser value thing is pretty much a wash: LH is also going to be asking for a fare difference, if applicable). However, if you are US-based, I would argue that the practical policy strongly favors UA. Although they could change it at any time, the fact is that UA is currently allowing people to change to an ETC at no cost, allowing you to bypass both the travel date restriction and the residual value ignored policy. Furthermore, if you found yourself needing to take a trip just to use the credit, with UA you have the possibility of using the ticket for domestic travel, which may not be possible on an LH ticket. Finally, if things are still bad enough in December, to the point where you wouldn't want to take the trip, I suspect that airlines will have extended their change policies accordingly. (Also: UA finally seems to have stopped fighting refunds due to schedule changes; LH, as nearly as I can tell, has not).