I'm seeing strange things as well. My wife and I were booked NRT-SFO in late November for 35K miles each in economy. I wanted to see if I could change to leave 2-3 days later and everything had gone to 100K each for coach.

Then I noticed a good cash business class fare using google flights on Asiana with connection in ICN so I looked on United to see if I could book with miles. But the cheapest business class I could find was 200K each. Then on sort of a whim, I logged out of my account and logged into my wife's and seached again for business class and, lo and behold, I found she had "special member pricing" for one day earlier than our planned return for 70k miles each. It did require a connection in LAX and then the flight from LAX-SFO was in coach, but the NRT-LAX was in polaris. Booked it and cancelled our coach reservation.

The same "special member pricing" does not show up on my account. I'm lifetime platinum and my wife has same status as my "million mile companion". I have a now obsolete Chase United Select card that may have some impact on availability that I see. I used same browser (firefox) for both -- in fact the same tab on the same browser.

I have been checking frequently if I can get the same rate a couple of days later and can find that rate in my wife's account but only on the same date (Nov 28), but now the connections are Chicago or DC with the domestic segment in coach so not nearly as desirable. And again the "member special rate" does not show up in my account.

Before hitting "submit reply", I just checked again for flights a couple of days later. I saw a "member special pricing" for 77k on my wife's account (but 200k on my) for business class HND-SFO one week later, but saw the connection was KIX. KIX is better for us because we will be in the far south of Japan so I looked at KIX-SFO and found the non-stop one week later for 70k each in Polaris. My wife is thrilled to extend our trip and add a stop in Osaka (which she loves) so I did a flight change (as she didn't have enough miles to book a new reservation) and it went through. Now we are non-stop KIX-SFO and we're both happy. But again, my account is showing the same flight for 200k miles. grrrrr. Would have preferred to rebook from my account as I have many more miles.

So my conclusion is that United has raised mile award pricing substantially and that United likes my wife much better than me..... Any one have any other reason?